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THE 

ORTHODOX 

DEVIL 


BY 

MARK GUY PEARSE 



THE ABINGDON PRESS 


NEW YORK 


CINCINNATI 


P23 

'Pairs' 


Copyright, 1922, by 
MARK GUY PEARSE 



Printed in tbe United States of America 


FEB -3 1923 

©C1A698174 


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V 



TO 


THE MEMORY OF 

JOHN WESLEY, A.M. 

Priest in the Church of England 

AND 

Founder of Methodism, 


i 


WHOSE NAME AND WORK SHOULD BE EVER A 
BOND OF UNION BETWEEN THEM 


On reading these papers in collected form — written 
at different times, and occasionally at long intervals 
— find here and there a repetition for which I 
must ask the forgiveness of my readers. 


CONTENTS 


PACK 

I. The Orthodox Devil 9 

II. The Parson and the Shoemaker. . . 21 

III. Can God Revive His Work.^ 31 

IV. Becky Murgatroyd Speaks Her 

Mind 36 

V. “Thou Fool” 50 

VI. Becky Murgatroyd Goes Home 59 

VII. A Liar 73 

VIII. An Old Man’s Tale 88 

IX. The Saved Soul That Is Lost 98 

X. Three Hopeless Things in God’s 

World 108 

XI. A Parable Ill 

XII. A Methodist Child of the Devil. . 117 

XIII. The Story of the Seed 127 

XIV. How John Permewan Said The 

Lord’s Prayer 129 

XV. The Greatest Story Ever Told . . . 144 

XVI. What a Sea Trout Did 150 

XVII. The Song of the Oyster Shell . . . 165 
XVIII. The Passing of Peter Tregwyn. . . 168 


i 


As life from life alone doth spring: 

As light from light doth come alone: 

So love in least and lowest thing 
Is held by God to be his Own, 

He who is Love, “For unto me 
Love giveth all it doth,” saith he. 

It is the monarch’s effigy 
That giveth gold its currency. 

And love in deed, and word, and thought 
Hath God’s own image in it wrought. 

All our might 
Used aright 
Purgeth sight. 

Sacrifice 
Cleanseth eyes 
That are dim. 

And Love hath this exceeding great reward 
The clearer vision of her glorious Lord. 


HIS CREED 

They questioned his theology. 

And talked of modern thought; 
Bade him recite a dozen creeds. 

He could not as he ought. 

He answer made, “I’ve got one creed. 
And do not want another: 

I know I’ve passed from death to life 
Because I love my brother.” 










I 

THE ORTHODOX DEVEL 


‘‘ITT is impossible to imagine that the devil 

I has any erroneous opinions!” 

Who is bold enough to make such a 
statement? It is not the utterance of a fanatic, 
ignorant and irresponsible. He who says it is 
the calm and logical John Wesley. 

And is there not the record of a yet greater 
authority? Is it not written in the Scrip- 
tures, “The devils believe” — a belief that is 
no mere argument, but a conviction that fills 
their whole being — they believe and tremble? 
They know God as we have never known him 
— can, indeed, never know him in this world. 
They have felt his power as we have never 
felt it. 

If, then, orthodoxy is religion — and with 
how many it is so — then, indeed, is the devil 
most religious. 

Ah, that terrible religion of the devil — what 
is it? Orthodoxy without hrotherliness, and reli- 
gion without lave. 

Think of it, earnestly, solemnly. What is 
the cruellest thing that ever came into God’s 
world? Not war at its bloodiest and fiercest, 
9 


10 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


hateful and terrible as that is. Not strong 
drink, with its bestiality and brutality. Look 
back over the ages so far as we have any 
record of the world’s religious history. We 
shall find that the cruellest thing that ever 
came into God’s world is religion without love. 
It has kindled more fires for the burning of 
martyrs, it has invented more diabolical tor- 
tures, it has wrought more dire and dreadful 
suffering, than war and strong drink put 
together. 

Strange and terrible truth! That which 
should have tamed the savage nature of man, 
that which should have refined him into 
gentleness and patient forbearance, to sunny 
sweetness and glad unselfishness, has turned 
him into a very monster of cruelty. Heathen, 
Jew, Mohammedan, Christian, have proved 
themselves alike in this. It is in the annals of 
the world’s religion that we shall find hosts of 
men filled with a hatred, not only incapable 
of pity, but unable to satisfy its passionate 
cruelty. 

We recall with horror the massacre on Saint 
Bartholomew’s Eve, when thousands of men, 
women, and children were murdered in cold 
blood for their religion. And only less terrible 
than the massacre itself was the rejoicing when 
the tidings reached Rome. “In the Holy City 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


11 


there was a universal outpouring of thanks- 
giving. Cannons were fired; the streets were 
illuminated. Pope Gregory walked in pro- 
cession with his cardinals from sanctuary to 
sanctuary, to offer their sacrifice of adoring 
gratitude. The scene of the massacre was 
painted by the Pope’s order, with an inscription 
immortalizing his own gratitude and approval. 
He struck a commemorative medal, with on 
one side his own image, on the other the De- 
stroying Angel immolating the Huguenots. He 
dispatched a cardinal to Paris to congratulate 
the King; and the assassins, on whose hands 
the blood of the innocents was scarcely dry, 
knelt before the holy man in the cathedral, 
and received his apostolic blessing.” 

We think of the diabolical tortures of the 
Inquisition in Spain. As Moccata writes: ‘Tn 
the middle of the sixteenth century, the 
golden age of modern art, the flourishing 
period of newly revived literature, when the 
rough habits, engendered by constant turmoil 
and. discord, were giving place to milder man- 
ners, the awful specter of the Inquisition be- 
came a living reality in the whole breadth of 
the Peninsula, and throughout those enormous 
colonies in America, in Africa, and in Asia, 
which were subject to the crowns of Spain and 
Portugal.” 




THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


It is impossible to imagine what awful torture 
this far-reaching power wrought throughout 
its dominions. The Jesuit historian Mariana 
assures us that in one year (1481) fully two 
thousand were burnt in the Archbishopric of 
Seville and the Bishopric of Cadiz. The 
Quemada, or cremation place in Seville, a 
square platform of stone, was a grim altar on 
which almost daily the lives of victims perished 
in the flames. 

Can we wonder at the outburst of Froude, 
who writes of these times, and especially of the 
hundreds of British sailors who endured the 
agonies of the Inquisition? “The religion of 
Christ was exchanged for the Christian religion. 
God gave the gospel. The Father of Lies 
invented theology. The highest obedience was 
held to lie in the profession of a particular 
dogma on inscrutable problems of metaphysics. 
Forgiveness and mercy were proclaimed for 
moral offenses; the worst sins were light in 
comparison with heresy; while it was insisted 
that the God of Love, revealed by Christ, 
would torture in hell-fire for ever and ever the 
souls of those who held wrong opinions as to 
his nature however pure and holy their lives 
and conversation might be.” 

Nor was it only on one side that we find this 
spirit of persecution. “The Catholic, on the 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


13 


authority of the Church, made war upon 
spiritual rebellion. The Protestant believed 
himself commissioned to extinguish the wor- 
shipers of images. ‘No mercy to heretics,’ was 
the watchword of the Inquisition. ‘The 
idolaters shall die,’ was the answering thunder 
of the disciples of Calvin” (Froude). 

The Spaniards, says Taylor in his Words 
and Places, were devout observers of the 
festivals of the church, and this often enables 
us to fix the date of their discoveries. Saint 
Augustine, the oldest town in the United 
States, was founded on Saint Augustine’s Day 
by Melendez, who was sent by Philip II, of 
Spain, on the pious mission of exterminating a 
feeble colony of Huguenot refugees who were 
seeking the religious liberty that was denied 
them in their native land. 

A religious feeling equally intense is evinced 
in the names which mark the site of the earlier 
Puritan colonies in North America. Salem 
was intended to be the earthly realization of 
the New Jerusalem, where a new reformation 
was to eradicate every frailty of our human 
nature. The penalties indicate how it was to 
be accomplished. 

“No one shall run on the Sabbath or walk 
in his garden.” 

“No one shall make beds, cut hair, or shave. 


14 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


and no woman shall kiss her child on the 
Sabbath.” 

“No one shall make mince pies or play any 
instrument except the trumpet, the drum or 
the jew’s harp.” 

“No food or lodging shall be given to any 
Quaker or other heretic.” 

Roger Williams, a noble-hearted man, who 
had been chosen as minister at Salem, dared 
to affirm the heresy that “the doctrine of 
persecution for cause of conscience is most 
evidently and lamentably contrary to the 
doctrine of Jesus Christ; and that no man 
should be bound to worship against his own 
consent.” Sentence of death was pronounced 
against him. He wandered forth in the snows 
of a New England winter; “for fourteen 
weeks,” he says, “he often in the stormy nights 
had neither food nor fire, and no shelter but 
in a hollow tree.” 

The savages showed him the mercy which 
his fellow Christians denied him. An Indian 
chief gave him food and shelter. But that 
wigwam in the far forest was declared to be 
within the jurisdiction of the Puritan colony, 
and this Apostle of Toleration was hunted 
even from the wilderness. He embarked with 
five companions in a canoe and landed on 
Rhode Island. With simple piety he called 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


15 


the first land he touched Providence — a place 
which still remains the capital of Rhode Island 
— a state that Williams founded as ^‘a shelter 
for persons distressed in conscience.” 

It is strange indeed to find those who had 
gone forth from their homes, enduring the 
perils and discomforts of another land in order 
to find freedom to worship God, yet themselves 
subjecting to the death penalty all Quakers, 
as well as all persons guilty of idolatry, witch- 
craft, or blasphemy. 

Let us remember that the heresy of one age 
becomes the orthodoxy of the next. One 
generation stones the prophet. The next 
generation erects a monument to his mem- 
ory. 

The Arminianism which was the strength 
and glory of the Methodist Revival was, but a 
hundred years before, a deadly heresy to the 
Independent and Presbyterian — so deadly, that 
one of them braved the penalty which his 
pamphlet incurred: Twice to stand in the 
pillory, to have both his ears cut off, to be 
branded on each cheek, to be fined thousands 
of pounds, and to be imprisoned for life. 

In Fitchett’s Life of Wesley he tells of an old 
Calvinistic minister to whom one said, “Would 
you not cut the throat of every Methodist if 
you could?” The old man blazed with fury. 


16 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


‘‘And, indeed, did not Samuel hew Agag in 
pieces before the Lord!” 

Did not John Wesley declare that Whitefield’s 
religion made God worse than the devil, more 
false, more cruel, more unjust? Yet who shall 
think that John Wesley was dearer to the 
heavenly Father than was George Whitefield? 

Let us recall the time when the orthodox 
church threatened to burn the miserable heretic 
who should dare to assert that the earth went 
round the sun, and to deny that the sun went 
round the earth. What was to become of the 
Scriptures if such a thing were believed? To 
be proved wrong in one thing was to destroy 
its force in all. How could the Bible be true 
unless the sun really rose and set as the Lord 
Jesus declared? How could Joshua make the 
sun stand still unless it were going on? How 
could the world be round when the Bible 
talked of the corners of the earth? 

By and by these terribly orthodox people 
found that they were quite wrong, as the ages 
will go on finding that we are wrong about 
many things that the church has denounced 
with the spirit, if not the penalty, that threat- 
ened Galileo of old. 

And may we not make a parable of it? The 
great sun in the heavens said indignantly, 
“Unless they treat me with rightful honor and 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


17 


put me in my proper position, they shall have 
no light, no warmth; they shall have no grass, 
no fruit, no flowers, no corn.” No, indeed. 
“Poor dears,” said the great sun pitifully, 
“whatever they think about me, they need 
my light and my warmth. They want their 
com, their grass, their flowers, their fruit.” 
And when they put the sun in its right place 
there was not another buttercup, nor a daisy 
the brighter. 

Most reverently may we carry our illustra- 
tion to the great Creator of sun and earth — the 
loving Father of us all.?^ If it be true^hat no 
man can be saved by his orthodoxy, is it not 
equally true that no man shall be lost for the 
lack of it? 

If, when we were yet sinners, God loved us, 
shall he make his love to us dependent upon 
our broken notions about him? The more 
foolish I am the more I need his pity and help. 

The Lord Jesus bade us think of the mother 
and father in relation to their children as the 
great revelation of our heavenly Father to- 
ward us. If ye, being evil, know how to give 
good gifts to your children, how much more 
shall your heavenly Father care for you, and 
minister to you, and do you good? 

We dare not think of a mother as many 
people think of God. If only men would think 


18 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


of God as they think of a mother, they would 
have a new God, and a true God. Try to 
imagine a mother saying to her little child, 
“Little one, I cannot love you until you under- 
stand all about the mystery of fatherhood and 
motherhood, and all about the physiology of 
life and birth.” Poor little one! 

And is the love of our Father God to be put 
to shame by the love of the mother which he 
himself has made.^ Think of that much more 
— an infinite more — much more shall your 
Father which is in heaven pity and love us, 
his poor little ignorant and mistaken chil- 
dren. 

Alas, what do I know of anything.^ What 
do I know of myself.^ What makes my heart 
beat? No man knows. Whence comes this 
life of mine — what does it depend upon — 
whither does it go? Who, then, am I to bring 
the Most High into definitions, and dream 
that his love and my salvation depend upon 
them? Surely there is no more perilous heresy 
than to set limits and conditions about the 
infinite love of our heavenly Father. 

The truth lives. And, because it lives, it 
grows. Does not the Lord Jesus still say to 
his disciples, “I have many things to say to 
you, but ye cannot bear them now”? And is 
not the providence of God forever fitting the 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


19 


world to receive the richer, fuller, deeper, 
higher truth? 

We laugh at our grandfathers — not unkindly 
— a laugh of amusement, not of ridicule — not 
in any way forgetting their goodness and the 
beauty of their character. We say they had 
some funny notions. And let us be assured 
of this — our grandchildren will laugh in the 
same way at us. Let us hope, in no way less 
kindly. It will be a sad thing for them if they 
do not go as far ahead of us as we have gone 
ahead of our grandfathers. We cannot keep 
the truth where we found it, any more than 
they could. 

A friend of mine with whom I was talking 
of these things remarked, “But does it not say 
that God is angry with the wicked every day?” 
“Of course he is,” I said. “Think of yourself 
passing along the street some night. There 
are a lot of boys making a noise — it may be 
fiercely quarreling, and almost ready to fight. 
‘What a pity it is,’ you say to yourself, as you 
hurry homeward, ‘that these boys should be- 
have like this.’ But now you catch sight of 
your boy among them — now you are angry. 
Why? Because he is yours. You are angry 
because you love. Anger is the white heat of 
love — the indignation of love. God is angry 
because he loves.” 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


SO 

Is not this the source and sum of all our 
theology — He that loveth Jcnoweth God; for God 
is love? And is not this the one sure proof of 
our religion — We know we have passed from 
death unto life, because we love our brother? 

Alas, that we should be compelled to think 
that in our churches there is so often the 
religion that is satisfied with its orthodoxy — 
without brotherliness; and with its services — 
lacking love. 

Take heed, therefore, and beware of the 
orthodoxy of the devil. 


II 

THE PARSON AND THE SHOEMAKER 


P ENULUNA’S van was a delightful place 
for gossip. It was slow and leisurely, 
without the roar and rattle of the train, 
so that everybody could hear what was said. 
In Penuluna’s van there was nothing to look at 
but each other, so you looked and talked — or 
else were content to listen and think while 
others talked, as I did on the occasion of which 
I would tell. 

The travelers were few that day, as we 
journeyed into the church-town. There was 
the rector of the parish, a big, sturdy man, 
from up the country somewhere, who would 
have liked the people better if he had been 
born and bred amongst them. He knew them 
mostly, almost only, as antagonistic to his 
High-Church views and ways. And the people 
would have liked him better if they could have 
drawn nearer to him as a man and known him 
as something more than a parson. 

Opposite to him sat the village shoemaker, a 
little man with black whiskers sinking down 
in the hollow of his cheeks, and giving to his 
big, protruding chin a provoking prominence. 
21 


22 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


The mouth was tight and tended downward 
at the corners; a long upper lip, and above it 
a round button of a nose. The brows came 
heavily over his eyes — a grim, defiant kind of 
man, eager for an argument, whether on 
politics or religion, yet not without a ready 
humor that he could turn to good account. 

In politics he was a red-hot Radical; in 
religion a red-hot Particular Baptist. In 
politics there were a few who went some way 
with him, but in his religious opinions he was 
alone, the only representative of the faith, and 
so its champion. He read much, but only such 
literature as favored his own way of thinking 
— he could find no room in his thoughts for 
what he did not agree with. 

Narrow, cocksure, pugnacious as he was, I 
felt sure that the journey could not go long 
without his drifting into a controversy with 
the church parson, who was a Tory as well as 
High Churchman, and I wondered within my- 
self whether it would be political or religious. 

It began very soon. The little shoemaker 
folded the local paper which he had been read- 
ing and put it in his pocket. Then he took off 
his spectacles and put them in a wooden case. 
By way of throwing down the gauntlet he 
leaned forward and tapped the parson’s knee 
with the spectacle case. 


PARSON AND SHOEMAKER 


23 


“Deal of talk goin’ on, I see, about the 
churches coming closer together. What do you 
think of it, Passen?” 

The parson had fallen into a restful doze, 
and started. “I beg your pardon. I did not 
quite follow your remark.” 

Then the shoemaker’s mouth tightened and 
bit the words. “All this here talk about the 
churches coming closer together — what’s the 
good of it.^ That’s what I do want to know — 
what’s the good of it?” 

“Well, I hope it may bring us nearer to each 
other; that is my earnest hope.” 

“Nearer together!” and the shoemaker drew 
himself up and said scornfully, “Pooh!” He 
leaned back in his seat and muttered, “Nearer 
together!” 

“Well, 1 think certainly for us to get nearer 
together and understanding each other better 
would be a good thing — a very good thing.” 

“Nearer together!” and again the little 
shoemaker laughed scornfully. “Shall I tell 
’ee what it do mind me of? The other day I 
was going along the road, and there was a 
storm coming. The great black clouds was in 
the sky. You could see the rain beating thick 
on the moors, and now and then came a flash 
o’ lightning and a roll of thunder. Well, I 
opened the gate of a field for to get under the 


24 ! 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


shelter of the hedge — a big hedge it was, with 
big thorn bushes on top of it coming over any- 
body like a great umbrella. I crooked down 
the hedge so snug as could be. 

“Presently the cattle came galloping up 
to the hedge ’pon my side, and I could hear 
the scamper of the cattle ’pon the other. 
‘B-o-o-h!’ says one of the bullocks ’pon one 
side. ‘B-o-o-h!’ says one of they bullocks ’pon 
the other side. But, bless ’ee, Passen, there was 
that great hedge between them, and they great 
thorn bushes ’pon top of it. They’d come 
nearer together, but they didn’t know each 
other any more for that.” 

“But will you not give us credit for more 
intelligence than the cattle?” said the parson 
with a little laugh. “It is not a complimentary 
way to talk of men and women, especially 
Christian men and women.” 

But the shoemaker was not to be checked 
or turned away by any interruption. 

“Well,” he went on, “that there was to 
my mind a kind of parable, Passen. The 
churches. Church of England so well as the 
rest of ’em, can see there’s a storm coming 
that’s going to shake a good many things that 
have stood for years. ‘What shall us do?’ says 
they, a bit anxious and frightened. ‘Let 
us come together, and understand each other 


PARSON AND SHOEMAKER 


25 


better/ But what’s the good o’ that when 
there’s that great hedge between ’em with they 
great thorn bushes ’pon top of it that there’s 
no getting over? You can’t find a gap in that 
for to get through, and not so much as a gate 
from one field to another. So there you are.” 
The little shoemaker drew himself up and 
tapped his own knee with his spectacle case 
triumphantly. ‘Tss, there you are.” 

“And what do you mean by the hedge with 
the thorn bushes on it?” asked the parson. 

“Mean by it!” snapped the little shoemaker. 
“I do mean the Sacrament, what you do call 
the Holy Communion.” 

The parson drew himself back and folded 
his arms, evidently unwilling to let so sacred a 
matter become the subject of a heated con- 
troversy. But the shoemaker must go on 
with it. 

“Iss, Passen, there’s the hedge that there’s 
no getting over, and there’s no creeping under, 
and no gate for to go through, neither. You 
do believe that when you do take the bit o’ 
bread in your hand you can turn it into the 
body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if any- 
body else but a passen do give it ’tis nothing 
but a bit o’ bread still. Aw, dear, dear! ’tis 
amazin’, amazin’!” And the shoemaker leaned 
back again. 


26 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


The parson sat still with folded arms, and 
made no reply. 

“Look at it, look at it!” cried the little 
shoemaker, thinking the silence meant the con- 
fusion of his opponent. “A man that you do 
call a bishop puts four fingers and a thumb on 
top of your head, and because of that ” 

“You must not talk of these mysteries so 
flippantly,” said the parson, in a tone of re- 
proof. 

“ ’Tisn’t flippant, Passen — no, ’tisnT flip- 
pant,” said the shoemaker. “ ’Tis indig- 
nant.^^ 

“I am quite willing to talk of these holy 
mysteries,” said the parson, quietly, “if you 
are only willing to think of them reverently. 
You must not be offended if I remind you 
that we are not to give things that are holy 
to those who can only bark and bite. You will 
forgive me, I am sure.” 

It was spoken in such a pleasant and quiet 
way that the shoemaker was half inclined to 
soften his tone. 

“Well, I do get a bit hot when I think about 
it,” he said. And he drew out a large red 
handkerchief and mopped himself with it, as if 
the heat were physical only. 

Then the parson leaned forward and began. 
“Well, now, let us look at it quietly and de- 


PARSON AND SHOEMAKER 


27 


voutly. You remember that the blessed Lord 
Jesus said, ‘Except ye eat my flesh and drink 
my blood ye have no part in me/ ” 

Again the little shoemaker blazed as he 
leaned forward and snapped, “ ’Tis figurative 
— not literal, o’ course; ’tis figurative.” 

“Now, I have listened patiently to you,” 
said the parson, “and I must ask you to listen 
as quietly to me. ‘Except ye eat my flesh 
and drink my blood,’ said the blessed Lord. 
Think of anyone else saying it, any great 
religious leader. Think of Saint Paul saying 
it, John Wesley, or General Booth. It would 
be absurd, and worse than absurd. From the 
lips of the Lord Jesus the words must have 
some great mysterious meaning. Perhaps you 
remember that many of those who had followed 
the Lord up to tliat time, were offended at the 
saying and turned back and followed him no 
more. They lost the Saviour because they 
stumbled at his words. 

“The Master saw the controversy that would 
arise out of the words, yet he did not soften 
them, but repeated them with great emphasis 
at the most sacred moment of the church’s 
history. At the Last Supper the Lord Jesus 
took the bread and brake it, and said, ‘This is 
my body which is broken for you/ And he 
took the cup and said, ‘This is my blood which 


28 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


is shed for you.’ Now, to me here is the mys- 
tery and miracle that constitutes and declares 
the Church of Christ — this perpetual miracle 
which brings to us the very body of the Lord 
Jesus Christ.” 

Now, at this point, when to me the conversa- 
tion became of the deepest interest, Penuluna’s 
van drew up at the market town, and we must 
part. 

“Well,” said the shoemaker, as he rose to- 
ward the door. “There ’tis again, that great 
hedge with the thorn bushes ’pon top of it, 
and without a gap or a gate. Us can’t find 
our way over that. Good-morning.” 

The parson, and shoemaker and I went our 
several ways. 

That night I sat in my little room in the 
village, thinking of the morning’s talk, and re- 
called the shoemaker’s words, “Us can’t both 
be right, Passen.” On his side, at any rate, 
there had been a look of triumphant assurance, 
as if the outcome were certain. I smiled as I 
saw again his clever picture of the great hedge 
with the thorny bushes and the lowing cattle 
on either side of it, coming nearer, but not 
much the better for that. 

“The shoemaker is certainly right in one 
thing,” I said to myself, as I leaned back in 


PARSON AND SHOEMAKER 


29 


the easy chair. “There’s a storm coming that 
is going to shake a good many things — inside 
the churches, and outside, too.” 

I sat before the fire thinking the matter over 
until it was late, and I fell asleep. My thoughts 
gave place to a dream, clear and vivid, as 
dreams seldom are. 

Again I saw the parson and the shoemaker — 
but they stood before the great White Throne, 
whereon sat the blessed Lord as Judge. Boldly 
spoke the parson as he bowed reverently in 
that sacred Presence. “Here are thine own 
words, my Lord, which I took as if thou didst 
mean them. I trust I have not erred.” 

I think it must have been my own sub- 
consciousness that softened the tone and words 
with which the shoemaker made answer to the 
Lord the Judge. “I read thy words, O Lord, 
but could not take them literally — could not 
The very nature that thou hast given me, all 
my being shrank from a thing that seemed to 
me so outrageous that I can scarcely put it 
into words — eating human fiesh and drinking 
human blood! My Lord, my Lord! I could 
not. I trust thou wilt bear with thy servant 
in this thing.” 

Then I saw a smile on the face of the Lord, 
most gracious and loving. “My children, my 
children,” said he, “there is room for you both 


30 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


in my heart, and there is room for you both 
in my heaven.” 

Then were parson and shoemaker lost in the 
light. 


Ill 

CAN GOD REVIVE fflS WORK? 


W E are all praying, ‘‘Lord, revive thy 
work. Lord, save souls.” But, really, 
can God do it? 

There was a time when it was done — and I 
am not sure that it was in answer to prayer. 
It came of itself, naturally, irresistibly. To 
revive his work is surely what the blessed 
Father of all men desires to do far more than 
we ever want him to do it. As surely as he 
revives the earth with sunshine and shower in 
the spring-time, so surely does he seek to 
revive all things heavenly and blessed within 
the souls of men. But can he do it? 

There is an awful saying in the Gospels: 
“LTe could do there no mighty work.^^ 

Think of it. All the great longing of his 
heart, all the yearning of his love undone. 
He who raised Lazarus from the dead, who 
opened a blind man’s eyes, who healed a 
trembling leper, could do nothing. The Almighty 
powerless! Omnipotence paralyzed! Why? 
Because no man put himself in line with God 
to fulfill his plans and purposes. 

31 


32 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


We pray, ‘‘Give us this day our daily bread.” 
Yet God himself can only answer that prayer 
when the man puts himself in line with heaven 
and earth. He must fulfill the conditions, or 
he will get no bread. Up there is the sunshine 
and shower; down here is the earth. Then 
comes the man who puts himself in fine with 
each of them. He goes forth with the plow 
to turn the furrows; he goes forth to fling the 
seed com. Then God can answer our prayer, 
but only then. Then only is the daily bread ours. 

So is it with all life, spiritual as well as 
natural. We must fulfill the conditions, or 
God’s love and power can do nothing. 

Let us rouse ourselves earnestly to ask, feel- 
ing the tremulous significance of it all — When 
was it that God added to the church daily 
such as were being saved 

It was when his people were consumed with 
a great brotherliness — it was when the flames 
of God’s love melted all within them to a 
divine compassion and eager helpfulness. Here 
is the record: “All that believed were together 
and had all things common. And sold their 
possessions and goods and parted to every man 
as every man had need. And the Lord added 
daily to the church such as were being saved.” 

Now, honestly, what do we make of it? 
We pooh-pooh it aside with a breath of in- 


CAN GOD REVIVE HIS WORK? 33 


difference if we think of it all. And if one 
should urge it, at once it is met with an angry 
contempt. What nonsense! You don’t mean 
seriously to require any such condition as that. 
It is sheer and blank Socialism. It is simply a 
rude Communism. 

Yes, Socialism — but the Socialism of Jesus 
Christ, “Who was rich, yet for our sakes be- 
came poor, that we through his poverty might 
be made rich.” Communism — but the Com- 
munism of God our Father, whose Fatherhood 
means a true brotherhood among men. 

If that were made a condition of church 
membership, we see the crowds going forth 
from its midst of whom it should be again 
recorded, “He went away grieved; for he had 
great possessions.” 

But let us at any rate be willing to consider 
this much: Can God revive his work in the 
church where there is no brotherliness and 
love? If our religion means a selfish salvation, 
that, and that only and nothing else, must it 
not be written to-day as of old, could there 
do no mighty worW? 

What, then, is the matter with the churches? 
All admit and bewail the fact that there is 
something the matter. What is it? Here it is; 
put your finger right on it: Orthodoxy vnthout 
brotherliness; and religion without love. 


34 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


We are very familiar with the phrase, “Dear 
brethren,” and even “Dearly beloved 
brethren”; but where is the brotherhood? 
Take one fact, and let it settle the matter. The 
poor old body that kneels next to me at the 
Lord’s Table may go to the workhouse to- 
morrow. 

“Well,” you say, “what is that to me? I 
give something to the collection for the poor, 
and what more can anybody expect?” 

Alas! He could there do no mighty work. 

Have we forgotten the saying of the Lord 
Jesus — “He who saves his soul shall lose it”? 
It is only he who gives his soul away in love 
who shall find it. 

Is it really worth while for God to revive his 
work if our religion is only the blind and 
miserable selfishness of saving our own souls 
and going to heaven when we die, content to 
live in utter indifference to our neighbor? If 
the great test of our religion is ignored, what is 
it worth? Here it is: “7/ a man say I love God, 
and loveth not his brother, he is a liar^ 
that loveth not ahideth in death/^ 

Is it really worth while for God to revive 
his work if the man in the church can be as 
mean and unbroth erly as anybody else? If he 
can be as snappy and snarly; if he can be as 
quick to take offense and as spiteful in showing 


CAN GOD REVIVE HIS WORK? S5 


it; if he can be as jealous as anybody else, and 
as angry when he cannot have his own way? 

Is it worth while for God to revive his work 
if the man in the church, in spite of the solemn 
warning against desiring to be rich, can be as 
eager and keen to be rich as anybody else; can 
put that first and foremost in his thoughts, his 
efforts, his life, for which everything else must 
be set aside; if he can be quick to take advan- 
tage of his neighbor’s misfortune or ignorance; 
if he can be content to ruin his poor brother 
by mean advantage-taking or by underselling? 

Is it worth God’s while to revive his work 
if the man in the church can spend huge sums 
of money on luxuries and self-indulgence, and ^ 
be content to give God only of the superfluity 
of his wealth that costs him nothing? Can 
God revive his work in such conditions? 

Let the preacher preach this much, at any 
rate; let the League members take it as the 
motto for a devotional meeting: The religion 
that does not save a man out of selfishness 
into love will never save him out of any hell 
into heaven. 

Where love is, there God is. And where 
love is not, there God is not. And where God 
is not, what hope of any revival? Again it 
shall be recorded. He could there do no mighty 
work. 


IV 


BECKY MURGATROYD SPEAKS HER 
MIND 

Told by Her Leader 

P OOR old Becky — she is a great favorite 
of mine; clear-seeing and clear-thinking, 
she can get to the heart of things with 
as few words in doing it as any one I ever 
knew. Bright, happy, contented, surprisingly 
so to many, but not to me who knew her long 
faith in God, and the bravery with which she has 
accepted her lot. And a hard lot indeed it is. 
For years she had toiled in the fields, in bleak 
weather as well as in fine weather, sometimes 
drenched to the skin and sometimes numbed 
with the cold, living on a wage that was hardly 
enough to keep body and soul together, yet 
managing to do it somehow, and never failing 
to give her penny a week and shilling a quarter. 
Now she lived on her Old Age Pension, and 
almost hesitated to accept the dole that I got 
for her from the Poor Fund. 

I had persuaded our new young minister to 
call and see her, and to take her the Quarterly 
Ticket, thinking it would do them both good. 
36 


BECKY SPEAKS HER MIND 37 


A few days afterward I called, anxious to 
know how the interview had gone off. 

Becky sat in the kitchen of her little cottage, 
just finishing her midday meal. 

“That’s done,” she said, as she put the iron 
spoon in the empty basin. 

“What have you had, Becky?” I said. 

“A basin o’ kettle broth. ’Tis nourishin’ 
and ’tis easy made and ’tis cheap.” 

“Do you tell me how you make it,” I said, 
for she smacked her lips over the last spoonful 
with evident enjoyment. 

Becky laughed. Hers was a face always 
worth looking at, but best when she laughed 
— the eyes twinkled then with good humor — 
but they could blaze when need be — and her 
lips were more used to smile than to scold, 
but they could tighten and fling out fierce say- 
ings when the fires were kindled within her — 
which was not very often. 

“Tell thee how to make kettle broth! Thee’lt 
never come to that. But thee may so well 
know. You see, when your teeth can’t eat so 
well as they used to do, crusties is things 
that’s hard to manage, but for all that they’re 
things that a poor body can’t afford to throw 
away. So you sets them in the basin, and 
puts in a sprinkle o’ salt and pepper, and a 
lump o’ margarine. Then pour boiling water 


S8 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


over the lot and lev’ it soak — and there you 
are. A dainty dish to set before a king — at 
any rate, if he can’t get anything else.” And 
Becky laughed again. ‘‘So that’s kettle broth, 
and now thee knows.” 

“Well, you had a call from our young 
minister,” I said, as we gathered by her little 
fire. 

Becky’s face was changed at once. The 
little eyes flashed, the smile vanished, the 
mouth tightened, and the underlip was thrust 
out scornfully. Her only response was a grunt, 
“Aye.” 

“I hope you were glad to see him.” 

There was no answer. 

“There was nothing wrong?” I said, wonder- 
ing at the change in her face and manner. 

“Glad to see him? Well, if there was any 
gladness in it, I’m feared it was to see him go.” 

“But I gave him the Quarterly Ticket to 
bring to you.” 

“Aye — and he brought it reet enough — he 
brought it. But he took it away agen.” 

Here was a mystery indeed, and I waited 
for Becky to tell the story. It was some 
minutes before she began. 

“Weel, I’ll tell thee how it came abaht. I 
were sittin’ in t’ chair when there came a knock 
to the door. ‘Come in,’ says I. So in he 


BECKY SPEAKS HER MIND 


39 


come. My! A proper gentleman. And he 
put his hat ’pon t’ chair and lays his gloves 
alongside. 

“ ‘Seven and sixpence,’ says I to mysen! 
Then he set back his coit, and I seed a gold 
ring on t’ finger, and a great gold chain spannin’ 
his westcoit. ‘Umphl’ says I to mysen. 

“ ‘I have been asked by your leader to come 
and see you, and to bring you the Quarterly 
Ticket.’ And he sets it down ’pon table. 

‘T looked him over from head to foot, and 
then says I, ‘If I hadn’t kept t’ rules and 
regglelaytions o’ Society I shouldn’t have any 
reet to Ticket, I reckon?’ 

“ ‘Certainly not,’ says he. 

“‘Umphl’ says I. ‘And thee art minister!’ 

“ ‘Yes,’ says he, like a thing tookt back a 
bit. 

“ ‘And thee art bahnd to keep rules and 
regglelaytions same as I am, on’y more so, for 
thee art an example to the flock.’ 

“ ‘Well!’ says he. 

“ ‘Give me t’ Bible off t’ shelf,’ I says. So 
I opened it and took out rules and regglelay- 
tions. ‘Thou hast brought my Quarterly 
Ticket,’ I says, ‘and thee may tak’ it back 
agen, and tell Leader to bring it his sen.’ 

“ ‘But he asked me to bring it,’ says he. 

“ ‘Aye, and I ax thee to tak’ it back.’ 


40 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


“ ‘Really/ says he, ‘this is very amazing/ 

“ ‘Happen ’tis,’ says I. ‘But if thee’ll tak’ 
it reet it may be very edifyin’/ 

“ ‘I don’t understand you at all,’ says he. 

“ ‘Weel, lad,’ I says, ‘I’ll show thee. Here’s 
rules and regglelaytions o’ Methodist Society. 
And here’s one on ’em sayin’ thee’s not to put 
on gold or costly apparel.’ 

“ ‘But ’tis a present,’ says he, fingerin’ the 
chain. 

“‘Then, lad,’ says I, ‘the only thing for 
thee to do is to make a present of it to some 
poor body with an empty belly and a bare 
back, same as rules and regglelaytions tells 
thee to. Here ’tis,’ — and I read it out to him 
— ‘Doin’ good to all men, to their bodies by 
giving food to the hungry and clothing the 
naked.’ Dost think thy Lord and Master, the 
Carpenter, would go abaht with a gold ring on 
his finger and a gold chain over his coit? Nay, 
lad, tak’ ticket back to Leader, and teft^ him 
to bring it his sen. And when thou dost begin 
to keep rules and regglelaytions o’ Society thou 
can come again.’ 

“He got up for to go, when I says, ‘Lad, I’ve 
got a word more for thee if thou canst stop 
a minute. Folks don’t hke thy preachin’. 
Preachin’! It isn’t preachin’ to read a bit o’ 
summat abaht religion from a piece o’ paper. 


BECKY SPEAKS HER MIND 


41 


Think of Jesus Christ on the Mount read them 
summat abaht religion from a piece o’ paper — 
maybe with a lot of grand words in it that 
common folks couldn’t make nowt of! They’d 
have gone away home — I should — and not 
come back agen, either. 

“ ‘And hast ever thought what he preached 
abaht? He preached about the wants o’ t’ 
people, and how the heavenly Father cares 
for folks same as mother and father cares for 
their bairns. 

“ ‘Seemin’ to me, lad, thou hast been so 
long with thy Latin and Greek, thou hast 
forgotten what the common folks is like. If 
thou would go out and learn about the wants 
of the people, happen the Lord may have the 
makkin’ of a preacher in thee yet. It is the 
same as in any other line o’ bisiness, thine is. 
’Tis no good goin’ to market with things folks 
don’t want, and thou hast got to find out for 
thysen what they do want. Then thou canst 
preach. Thee munna be offended. I’ll promise 
thee one thing, and I can do nowt better — I’ll 
pray for thee every neet and momin.’ ” 

“I am afraid he didn’t like it,” I said. 

“Happen not,” said Becky, “happen not. 
I don’t know as I like salts and senna, but 
there’s times it does me good. It all depends 
how he taks it.” 


42 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


‘T’m afraid he won’t come again.” 

will/* said Becky, ^*he will. Thou’It 
see. Thou canst send next Quarterly Ticket 
by him, and I’ll be glad to have it.” 

Becky was right. Her faith was justified. 

What Came of It 

The picture that rises before me as I begin 
is of the incident when two of David’s soldiers 
came flying down the hill from their pursuers. 
A woman sat winnowing the corn — a sheet 
spread and she flinging the grains for the wind 
to bear away the husks and the chaff — com- 
mon, dusty work. But underneath the sheet 
was a shallow well with a bubbling spring. On 
came the soldiers seeking refuge. In an instant 
the woman’s heart was filled with pity. “Here,” 
she cried, “creep under the sheet and hide in 
the well.” A moment later and they were 
hidden. Again she sat, and the corn was 
flung and the husks flew. 

On came the pursuers. Had she seen them? 
With ready wit she said, “Yes, yes, and they 
have gone over the brook.” 

So it is that underneath the dusty work of 
our common life there are wellsprings of pity, 
but it is only the wants of others, and our 
concern for them that can reveal the depths. 
The wants of other people put us in possession 


BECKY SPEAKS HER MIND 


43 


of our best selves. The finest fiddle can only 
know its music through the scraping of the 
bow. 

It was toward the end of December that a 
heavy rain had been followed by a keen and 
sudden frost so that the streets were like a 
sheet of glass. Our young minister was care- 
fully makng his way late in the evening to 
his lodgings, when out of the public house 
came a man who had scarcely reached the 
steps of the place when he fell heavily to the 
ground. Our young minister found him quite 
unconscious with a wound on his head from 
which the blood flowed. 

Soon two or three came up, and whilst one 
was sent for the doctor, the others bore him to 
the house where, in a couple of rooms, he lived 
with his wife and children. A wretched 
drunkard, he had pawned for drink almost all 
that could be pawned. When all was done 
that could be done at the time, the doctor 
turned to the young minister. 

“There is no nurse to be got, and I am 
afraid his wife cannot manage it. She has a 
baby to see to. Everything depends upon 
these bandages being renewed constantly on 
his head. I don’t see what we can do.” 

Then the man woke up in the minister. Off 
went his coat. 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


U 


“Look here. Doctor, can you trust me?” 

“Will you stay?” 

“I will,” said he. “Perhaps you will send 
somebody to my lodgings to say I shall not 
be home.” 

“Well,” said the doctor, “I don’t know yet 
how it will go with him. Very much will de- 
pend upon you.” 

The work was done carefully and well, but 
through the night came a frequent coughing 
from the room below; and now and then the 
voice of a child, as if ministering to some sick 
body. 

In the morning the doctor came. “Now,” 
said he, “you go home and get some rest. His 
wife can see to him through the day.” 

“Doctor,” said the young minister, “I heard 
some one coughing badly during the night in 
the room below. Do you know who it is?” 

“A sad case, indeed,” said the doctor. “A 
young man, a very decent fellow, in con- 
sumption. He lost his wife some time ago, 
and has one Uttle daughter of some thirteen or 
fourteen years. How on earth he lives I don’t 
know. Could you call and see him? He used 
to belong to your Sunday school, and I am 
afraid nobody has been to look after him.” 

“Yes, I will see him as I go. I will come 
back again to-night.” 


BECKY SPEAKS HER MIND 


45 


“Well, yes, I am afraid I must depend on 
you. He is going on all right, but he needs 
carefully seeing to all the time.” 

Later the young minister stood at the door 
of the room below. He put his hand on his 
gold chain. 

“Bless me,” said he to himself. “How 
should I feel if I were in his place, hungry and 
starving, and a parson came in with his gold 
chain! His words of sympathy would choke 
me if this thing were dangling at his waistcoat.” 
And he smiled as he thought of old Becky. 
Hastily he thrust it out of sight and knocked 
at the door. 

It was opened noiselessly by a little girl, 
who put a finger on her lips. “He is asleep,” 
she whispered. 

He started as he looked at the white face, 
the poor little wasted frame so thinly clad, the 
large eager eyes that stared at him. “He 
would be glad to see you, sir, if you would call 
again. He has often wished that he could see 
a minister.” 

His voice choked with pity. “I will call 
again this evening,” he said. 

The breakfast finished, the first thing he did 
was to write a letter to his father. Might he 
sell the gold chain? Here were hungry folks 
needing a bit of food and a bit of fire. He 


46 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


went to bed, and worn out as he was, fell 
quickly asleep. But in his dreams he saw that 
poor little white face with the eager eyes. 

When he came down late in the afternoon 
there waited a meal that was to serve both as 
dinner and tea. 

“Mrs. Jenkins,” he asked the landlady, “do 
you know a young man, in the house where I 
have been for the night, in consumption I 
fear, or threatened with it; and a little girl 
who looks after him?” 

“Yes, yes, a very decent man — was a car- 
penter. He lost his wife some time ago, and 
has no one else to see to him but the little 
girl. He has been too ill to work. I am afraid 
he is very poor, and the child looks almost 
starved. In this cold weather and with his 
cough it must be dreadful for them.” 

The young minister pushed away the well- 
filled plate. “Can you keep that hot? Put it 
in a basin or something, and I will take it to 
them when I call.” 

“But you, sir?” said Mrs. Jenkins. 

“Me! I can’t look at it when I think of 
that little girl and her father. Here is a rice 
pudding for me. I think there will be enough 
for both of them.” 

Mercy is more than twice blessed. Mercy 
has a contagion that others catch. Mrs. 


BECKY SPEAKS HER MIND 


47 


Jenkins set the dinner in the oven, and then 
began to think what she could do. She sat 
for a moment and the firelight glistened in her 
tears. She had lost a little girl some time 
before. The clothes had been sacredly kept, 
and seldom had she been able to look at them. 
But now, she said to herself, if her little 
daughter could but know, would it not make 
her glad to know that her things had gone to 
warm this poor child? 

So our young minister, when he was ready 
to start, found Mrs. Jenkins with a large basket 
containing not only the dinner, but much 
more than that — a warm dress and under- 
clothing, stockings, and a pair of boots. 

'T am going with you,” said she. 

“But you must let me carry the basket,” 
said he. 

So they went on together, our fine gentle- 
man proudly carrying the big basket on his 
arm. If old Becky could have seen him then 
how it would have set her heart singing! 

The good work prospered in his hands. The 
man for whom he had cared through the night 
speedily recovered. That devotion had won 
his heart. 

“If that is religion,” said he, “that is the 
thing for me.” 

On a Sunday evening, at the close of the 


48 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


service, the two knelt together, and our young 
minister tasted the joy of leading a soul to 
Christ, that joy which once tasted is craved 
for ever afterward. The man went forth to 
tell others what he had found, and soon was 
started a class of sturdy working men. The 
paper had gone from the pulpit, as well as the 
gold chain from his waistcoat. Out of the full- 
ness of his heart his mouth spoke with the 
force of a living experience and a tender 
sympathy. 

The sick carpenter did not linger long. The 
young minister was his constant visitor and 
interested others who did much for the man’s 
comfort. When he passed away Mrs. Jenkins 
took the daughter as a help in the house. 

It was as the young minister sat at dinner 
one day that she ventured timidly to say, 
“May I tell you something, sir?” 

“Certainly, my dear,” said he, with his un- 
failing gentleness toward her. “WTiat is it?” 

“Do you know when you came to see my 
father, and were so good to him, I used to pray 
every night and every morning that I might 
somehow become your little servant, and do 
nothing all my life but wait upon you, sir. And 
I am so glad God answered my prayer.” 

“So am I, my dear, so am I,” said he. 

It was with all confidence that I gave him 


BECKY SPEAKS HER MIND 


49 


the next Quarterly ticket to take to Becky. 
With a face full of sunshine, and a voice full 
of gladness, she told me of that second inter- 
view. 

“Yes, he knocked at t’ door. ‘Come in,’ says 
I, ‘come in. Thee needn’t knock. Thou art 
real welcome. Come in.’ So he sits down and 
puts Quarterly Ticket on table. 

“ ‘Thou canst leave it this time, lad,’ I says. 
‘Eh, I knowed the good Lord would mak’ 
summat o’ thee, when I heard tell how thou 
was finding out t’ wants o’ folks. I heard tell 
abaht gold chain and all. Lad, that was the 
most powerful sermon thou hast ever preached. 
It made f folks believe in thee. And when they 
believe in t’ man, they’ll believe in t’ message. 
It’s like my old clock on t’ wall, when t’ works 
is reet it’ll strike reet. God bless thee, lad, 
God bless thee. I’ll keep prayin’ for thee neet 
and morning as I said, I canna promise thee 
owt better.’ ” 


V 

“THOU FOOL” 


A FRIEND had dropped in to see me, and 
we sat together in my study. He was 
a little dapper gentleman who prided 
himself on the unfailing propriety of his speech 
and manner. 

“What are you going to talk about on 
Sunday he asked. 

“Not quite sure,” I said. ‘T am thinking 
of Thou FooV^ 

He started. 

“Really, my dear sir, you must pardon me, 
but you do use dreadfully strong language. Is 
it not offensive and lacking in courtesy? I 
do not think a minister of refinement would 
permit himself to be guilty of anything like 
that. I cannot help thinking it is ungentle- 
manly — ^yes, there is no other word for it — 
ungentlemanly .” 

And as he rose to leave he repeated the last 
phrase — “ungentlemanly” — as if that were in- 
deed the sum of all that one should avoid, the 
great offense of which one should never be 
guilty. 


50 


“THOU FOOL” 


51 


I turned to my desk again and settled the 
matter as to my text: 

“Thou Fool/’ 

I could not help feeling that there was much 
to be said for my friend’s remarks. Certainly, 
no man likes being called a fool, whoever or 
whatever he may be. Thomas Carlyle in his 
pessimism summed up the population of Eng- 
land as consisting of so many millions, “mostly 
fools.” Well, he might perhaps have left out 
the “mostly,” for in some things and some- 
times the wisest and best of us find that it is 
horribly true. When a man calls another man 
a fool, this fact drives the other man to resent 
it, knowing it is true of both. And to say it is 
a sign of ill will, of harsh and hasty temper. 
Folly itself lies at the bottom of it. 

But what when God Almighty says, “Thou 
Fool”? 

Then may a man well stay and listen. From 
the lips of the dread Judge these words have 
an awful meaning. Surely when he, before 
whom we must all appear to give an account 
of the deeds done in the body, says ^^Thou 
Fool” we should be eager to know what can 
have provoked such words from his lips — 
“Tte Fool” 

Let us draw near to the Lord Jesus and hear 


52 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


the story which he tells. The ground of a 
certain man brought forth plentifully. And 
he thought within himself, “What shall I do 
because I have no room wherewith to bestow 
my fruits?” And he said, “This will I do: I 
will pull down my barns and build greater: 
and there will I bestow all my fruits and my 
goods.” And to put the story into a language 
up to date, he said, “Then I will retire from 
business and enjoy myself.” 

May we venture to fill out the story of this 
successful merchant? He had many friends 
and neighbors, and all of them, alike in the 
churches and out, spoke very highly of him as 
a prosperous man, industrious, quick-sighted, 
knowing when to sell and when to buy, always 
straightforward, never so far as we know doing 
anything that was mean. Fathers held him 
up to their sons as an example. And if he had 
any children of his own, the best people in 
the churches hoped that there might be some- 
thing more than an acquaintance with his 
family. 

FoolP No, indeed — no such word was ever 
used of this shrewd and prosperous man. 
When he wanted more room for his business, 
what else, in the name of common sense, could 
he do but enlarge his premises? And when he 
had made a fortune, what could be wiser for 


THOU FOOL” 


53 


him than to retire and enjoy himself? Surely, 
here is the last man in the world for any man 
to call a fool. He has earned what he got by 
industry and skill. Let him enjoy it. 

And God Said, “Thou Fool” 

I had got thus far in thinking of my subject 
when I was called away to visit a sick body. 
It was a long walk, and I did not get back 
until supper-time. Then I went to my study 
intending to get on with my work. But the 
hour was late, and I was tired and, like the 
prince of the apostles when he went on the 
housetop to pray, I fell asleep. Let the 
preacher be pitiful to any of his congregation 
who should fall asleep under his sermon when 
he himself is guilty of going to sleep (wer it. 

And, like Saint Peter, sleeping, I dreamed. 

I found myself invited as a guest at the 
house of this rich man. A servant in livery 
met me at the station and led me to a motor. 
The son, the only child of the rich man, sat as 
driver. He shook hands with me heartily, 
evidently a frank, good-hearted fellow. Then 
I sank down in the cushions of a most costly 
car, fitted with every luxury that could be 
devised for adding either to expenditure or 
indulgence. On the steps of the house the host 


54 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


came to greet me — a big, good-looking man, in 
evening dress, arrayed for dinner. 

“What do you think of it, sir.?” the son 
asked, as he came and stood on the steps, and 
pointing to the car. “Nothing finer to be had 
— cost over two thousand pounds.” 

It was after a very sumptuous dinner that 
we sat in the smoking-room. 

The butler came in. 

“Well, Pipkins, what is it?” asked my host. 

Pipkins stood caressing his smooth chin 
over the white tie. 

“Miss Thompson called, sir, to ask for your 
subscription to the Foreign Missions.” 

“Really, there is no end to this sort of thing,” 
said the squire, laying aside the cigar — and a 
very costly one it was. He took down the 
Missionary Report. “Ten guineas, I see.” 
And he wrote a check and addressed it to Miss 
Thompson. “Any one else been, Pipkins?” 

“Yes, sir. The superintendent minister 
wished me to remind you that he left the 
Report of the Worn-Out Ministers’ Fund, and 
would call again for your subscription of one 
guinea.” 

“Well, well,” said the host, annoyed, “do 
they think I am made of money?” 

He dashed off another check. “Now, I do 
hope that is all, Pipkins?” 


“THOU FOOL” 


55 


“Well, sir, the rector called to say that 
poor old Jones had fallen off the rick and 
broken his leg. They have taken him to the 
hospital. The rector is trying to get some help 
for the wife and children.” 

“Jones, Jones — drunk, I s’pose. No, not a 
halfpenny. The rector is chairman of the 
Board of Guardians, and I pay the poor-rate. 
What is the good of it if it does not meet such 
a case as that? I don’t like it, and you can 
tell the rector so.” 

We were seated again, and my host resumed 
his cigar. 

“By the by,” said he, “you are a bit of an 
artist, I believe. What do you think of that 
picture?” and he pointed to a large canvas 
handsomely framed, that hung on the farther 
side of the room. “They say it is Smith’s 
masterpiece. I gave a thousand guineas for 
it. It is worth fifteen hundred now, I am 
told.” 

I turned and looked at it, and said nothing. 
But in my mind I was running through some 
calculations. Motor-car, two thousand; house, 
grounds, gardens, servants, three, four, five 
thousand a year; Foreign Missions, ten guineas; 
Worn-Out Ministers’ Fund, one guinea; Poor 
Jones’s wife and children — nothing. And it 
was as if I saw another Presence there — the 


56 


THE ORTHODOX DEVEL 


sorrowful Christ, and from his lips came the 
words: ‘‘So is every one who is not rich to- 
ward God.” 

“Not rich — rich — rich — toward God.” And 
I went over the words slowly and with awe, 
for the tone of that sorrowful voice seemed 
to linger in them, as a note of music lingers 
in a room. “Not rich — rich — rich — toward 
God.” 

Then in my dream suddenly the scene 
changed. 

The stately house appeared a ruin. 

The place was desolate — an awful gloom 
rested on all. Before me stood an old man, 
withered, trembling. 

“You don’t remember me, sir.?^” he asked. 

I looked, and slowly recognized the butler. 

“Why, are you Pipkins.^” 

“I am, sir,” said he. “Ah, the changes, the 
changes!” And the old man wrung his hands. 

“The Squire?” I asked. “What has become 
of him?” 

“Dead, sir. He died suddenly, cut off 
amidst all the grandeur and glory of the 
place.” The old man shook his head and 
repeated the word, “Dmd.” 

“And the son — what became of him?” 

“Ah! a sad story, sir, a sad story. His 
money ruined him. Drink, gambling and his 


“THOU FOOL” 


57 


wild ways swallowed up all that was his of the 
property. He made away with himself in a 
fit of drunkenness. A terrible story.” 

“And the estate?” I asked. 

“It got into Chancery, sir, and never came 
out again. The place was stripped to pay the 
young master’s debts. And then a lot of poor 
relations came claiming this and that. So here 
it is — going to rack and ruin.” 

And the old man shook his head sadly — 
“Rack and ruin.” 

Then the gloom grew darker. 

Out of the darkness came a voice. It was 
the voice of God: 

“Thou Fool.” 

And again I heard the tones of that sorrow- 
ful voice — “So is everyone who is not rich — 
rich — rich — toward God.” 


58 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


“It is impossible to deny that Christ’s 
warnings and denunciations are mainly di- 
rected against wealth, and the desire for wealth, 
and the love of power which comes with 
wealth. This, too, is substantially the indict- 
ment of the prophets. Where has been the 
fire of prophetic indignation in the Church, 
which yet exists to represent Christ and the 
Bible!” — Bishop Gore. 

The most awful thing that can befall any 
man is to become independent of God — and 
that is the peril of wealth. 


VI 

BECKY MURGATROYD GOES HOME 


I LITTLE thought when the story of 
Becky was written — dear old Becky — 
that so soon she would be taken from us. 
In the spring of the year there came an epidemic 
of influenza, and among the many victims 
was Becky. Her constitution, toughened and 
hardened as it had been by her rough life, 
seemed for awhile to assure her recovery. But 
later came bronchitis, and although she might 
linger for some time, we felt there was little 
hope of her being restored to us. 

I found a neighbor who was willing to go 
morning and evening to see to her comfort; 
but it was our young minister who did most 
for her. He had gone to the Sewing Meeting, 
and as he sat with the ladies at tea he made 
his appeal. 

‘T want some of you young ladies to volun- 
teer for a bit of work — a week at a time — a bit 
of work that will do you good, and do good to 
somebody else. Now, who will volunteer for 
this service.f^” 

“Oh, but you must tell us first what we shall 
have to do,” said one and another. “How do 
59 




60 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


we know whether we are able to do it if you 
do not tell us what it is?” 

“Well,” said he, “I have faith enough in 
you to know that you can manage it if you 
will. Won’t you have faith enough in me to 
promise it, whatever it is?” 

Then a bright, sunny-faced young girl looked 
up and laughed. 

“I will volunteer.” 

Soon a group followed with a chorus, “And 
I!” “And I!” 

So the volunteers were won, and all waited 
eagerly to hear what it was they were to do. 

“Well, now,” he explained, “the first thing 
is— can you cook things for an invalid — beef- 
tea, chicken-broth, jellies and custards, and all 
these sort of things?” And he waited for an 
answer. 

“I can try, at any rate,” said the merry- 
faced girl, who had been the first to volunteer. 

“We will manage it somehow,” said the 
others. “Who is it for?” 

“Well, it is for a dear old friend of mine 
who is ill, and is very poor. I will tell you 
her name when I take you to see her, for there 
must be a formal introduction, you know.” 
Then he turned to the merry girl and said, 
“You must take the first week, of course. I 
will call to-morrow at twelve o’clock, and we 


BECKY GOES HOME 


61 


will go together. Mind the good things are 
ready.” 

“Oh, dear,” laughed the girl, “that is short 
notice. But I will manage somehow. Twelve 
o’clock to-morrow.” 

The next day the girl was waiting with a 
basket containing much more than had been 
asked for. There were a flask of beef-tea, a 
jelly, and custard and biscuits. There were 
some flowers beautifully arranged, and a 
bunch of grapes. 

“I am going to take you to poor old Becky 
Murgatroyd,” he explained, as they went 
together. “She does not need much, but I 
know it will be a joy to her to see you.” 

“I am sure I shall like to come,” said the 
girl. “I am so glad you asked me.” 

So they reached Becky’s cottage. 

“I have brought a young lady to see you, 
Becky. She has some things that I hope you 
will relish, and she will read to you. I will 
come in later to see how you have got on 
together.” 

“Eh!” said Becky, “come thee here, my 
lass, come thee here, and let me have a look at 
thee.” And Becky lifted herself on the pillow. 

She took the girl’s hand and looked into her 
merry face. 

“Eh, thee art a bonnie lass. Bless thee, my 


62 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


bairn. And thou hast come to bring me thy 
dainties. It does me good to look at thy 
bonnie face. The great prophet Elijah had 
nought but t’ ravens to bring him his vittles. 
Eh, if he had the likes of thee to bring them I 
reckon he’d have enjoyed them a deal more.” 
And the old hand was laid upon the girl’s. ‘Tt 
does me good to see thee, my bonnie lass. 
Bless thee!” 

The girl’s face was filled with joy at the 
greeting. Then she said, “But now you must 
not hinder me like this, you know. I’ve lots 
of things to do.” She took off her hat and 
cloak, and brought a table beside the bed and 
set out the store of good things, and in the 
midst of them her dainty bunch of flowers. 

“Eh, my lass, thou hast brought enough for 
a week,” said old Becky, reaching her hand 
for the flowers. 

“Well, you know, I’m coming every day 
for a week,” laughed the girl, “unless you get 
tired of me before the week is over.” 

“Eh, God bless thee, my bonnie bairn. I 
canna thank thee.” 

The cup of beef-tea and a biscuit were almost 
all Becky could take. 

“Oh,” laughed the girl, “I shall think you 
don’t like it unless you take a little of every- 
thing, you know.” 


BECKY GOES HOME 


63 


So Becky had to take a teaspoonfuFof jelly 
and a teaspoonful of custard. “Just to taste 
it, lass,” she said with a laugh. Then with 
the greatest relish she took some of the grapes. 

The little meal was ended, and the table 
cleared. Again the old hand held the girl’s 
in its feeble grasp, and looking into her face 
Becky could but keep saying, “Eh, my bonnie 
bairn. God bless thee. It does me good to 
look at thee.” 

“But I have not done my work yet!” laughed 
the girl. “He said I was to read to you — the 
young minister, I mean.” 

Even Becky’s eyes were not so dim but that 
she saw a faint flush spread over the girl’s 
face. 

“Eh, so it’s his doing and all, is it? Weel, 
God bless him, and bless thee too.” And for 
a minute Becky must have seen a little vision 
or dreamed a little dream. “A real bonnie 
pair,” said she to herself. 

Then, with the Bible on the table and her 
hand in Becky’s, the girl turned to the chapter 
Becky had chosen — the ninety-first Psalm. 

“He shall give his angels charge concerning 
thee,” came the words tenderly spoken and 
with musical sweetness. 

“Eh, my bonnie, bonnie bairn,” said Becky, 
with tears in her eyes, and pressing the girl’s 


64 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


hand. ‘T reckon he has sent one of them in 
thee.” 

The girl’s tender heart was melted. She 
looked up with tears in her eyes too, and then 
set her lips on Becky’s forehead. “Oh, I am 
so glad, so very glad I came.” 

The chapter was finished. 

“Now,” said Becky, “now, my bonnie 
bairn, thee must pray with me.” 

“Oh,” cried the girl, almost frightened, “I 
couldn’t do that. I never prayed in my life — 
I mean out loud.” 

“Then we must pray together — thee and 
me. Dost mind how once all the great apostles 
— ^Peter and John and James and all the rest — 
came asking the Lord Jesus to teach them to 
pray? And he said, ‘When ye pray, say Our 
Father.’ We can stop there, for to my thinking 
there’s everything in that — Our Father.” 

And Becky lay back on her pillows, as if 
resting and rejoicing in all that it meant to 
her. Then with eyes aglow she sat up again. 

“I must tell thee, my bonnie bairn, how I 
came to say it — ^and how thou canst begin to 
say it, too. 

“Weel, it was in t’ spring-time — a lovely 
day — and I was at work in t’ fields. Eh, I can 
hear them now — how all t’ birds were singing 
— ^the larks going up in t’ blue sky, and a thrush 


BECKY GOES HOME 


65 


were piping from top of an elm tree, and the 
cuckoos a-calling to each other; and in the 
wood the rooks was busy about t’ young ones, 
putting in a sort o’ bass to all the music. Eh, 
but it were grand to hear them all. 

“And t’ flowers — eh, the flowers. There was 
the scent of May in the air, and buttercups 
and daisies everywhere — God himself must 
have looked down from heaven, like it says in 
t’ Bible — ‘Behold, it was very good.’ 

“But that weren’t all. A young woman 
had come to work alongside o’ me, and she 
brought her baby. She put it down in a 
mossy place in t’ hedge, wrapped up in a shawl. 
And every now and then she’d turn her head 
to see t’ bairn was all reet. And times she 
went back to look at it. 

“Then it all come to me. I lifted mysen up 
from my work, and the beauty of it all filled 
my soul. ‘Eh, Becky,’ it seemed to say, ‘Eh, 
Becky, dost know how the heavenly Father 
loves thee?’ And I thought how the blessed 
Lord Jesus sat on a hillside and told t’ folks 
how the heavenly Father fed the birds. It was 
like as if he was there still, and said that I was 
much more to the heavenly Father than the 
birds. And how the heavenly Father clothed 
the flowers with beauty, and that he would do 
much more for me than he could do for them. 


66 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


“Then I watched t’ mother go over to t’ 
bairn, and I could hear the laugh of t’ little 
one, and t’ mother laughed back again. Eh, 
to think of it, my bonnie bairn — to think 
of it. I knew that was how the heavenly 
Father cared for me — for me. Eh, my bonnie 
lass, it filled my soul to overflowing, like as if 
everything was full of it. The birds sang it, and 
the flowers looked up and breathed the sweetness 
of it. But most of all and best of all were t’ 
bairn. ‘My Father,’ I says, ‘and I am thy 
bairn — thine own bairn, that thou dost love 
for thine own. Eh, to think that I can lie 
down in thy love, same as t’ bairn in t’ mother’s 
arms — that I can look into thy face and laugh 
with gladness, same as t’ bairn on t’ mother’s 
knee.’ 

“Eh, I knew then what it meant in the story 
when prodigal come home to his father, and 
they began to be merry. He had put t’ best 
robe about me, same as he’d give to the 
flowers; and music in my soul same as he’d 
give the birds. And I could take all his love 
for my own same as t’ bairn at t’ mother’s 
breast.” 

Then Becky lay back on her pillow at rest, 
as if compassed with those arms of love. 

There was silence for a while; their hands 
clasped. 


BECKY GOES HOME 


67 


“Now we will say it together/’ said Becky 
presently. And the tremulous voice of Becky 
and the music of the girl’s voice joined in glad 
utterance — “Our Father.” And to the happy 
girl it became as to Becky a living reality — a 
love shed abroad in the heart — a love to rest 
in and rejoice in — “Our Father.” 

So the afternoon passed. 

“Now I must go,” said the girl. “I shall 
come again to-morrow.” 

Becky drew her down at her side. “Eh, my 
bonnie bairn,” and she stroked the face that 
lay on the pillow beside her, “I am loath to 
let thee go.” 

“But I shall come again to-morrow, you 
know,” said the girl. 

“To-morrow” — ^and the word was spoken 
doubtfully. Was there a foreboding of the 
end? “To-morrow — weel, if I do not see thee 
again down here, I shall look for thee among 
t’ angels. I shall know thee, my bairn, my 
bonnie bairn.” 

Early the next morning the doctor was sent 
for. But it was all over — a sudden heart 
failure, and then the end. Becky, dear old 
Becky, had gone home. 

“I cannot tell you how glad I am that you 


68 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


asked me to go and see her,” said the girl, as 
she and the young minister walked back from 
the funeral. ‘T shall never lose the blessing 
I found at her bedside. And she called me 
her bairn, her own bonnie bairn.” 

“Well, I think I shall call you Becky’s bairn 
now,” said he. 

“Do — do — should like nothing half so 
well,” said she. 

But the story of Becky would be incomplete 
imless I told of what she did for the doctor. 

He was a big, sturdy man, somewhat rough 
in his manner, but with a heart full of tender- 
ness. He often came in to see me for a chat, 
and was always welcome. Liked by every- 
body, he was loved, almost adored by the 
poor. 

“I stop your indulgences when you’re ill, 
you well-to-do folks. You get too many of 
them. But I pile them up on poor folks when 
they are bad, because they can’t get them at 
any other time,” he said to me one day. 

“Sometimes they must be almost sorry to 
get better,” I laughed, for everybody knew 
they came from him, and he could afford it — 
a man independent of his practice. 

“I like that young minister of yours,” he 
said to me. “He is more than a parson — he is 


BECKY GOES HOME 


69 


a man. I shall come and hear him preach 
some day.” 

That was a new thing indeed for the doctor. 
Nobody had seen him in church or chapel. 
He was too busy for that, he said. But now it 
came about that on two or three occasions he 
slipped into my pew when our young minister 
was in the pulpit. 

It was Becky, however, who had most to do 
with the change that came over him. Always 
shy and reserved in speaking of religion, it 
was when we sat talking of Becky that he 
told me the story. 

‘Tt was not long before the end came that 
I sat at her bedside. ‘Doctor,’ said she, TVe 
been thinking abaht thee — thinking a deal 
abaht thee, I have. Now, if I was out on t’ 
moors in t’ dark and storm trying to find my 
way home, and thou wert to come along, why, 
thou wouldst stop car and call out to me, 
“Here, Becky, let me give thee a lift!” And 
thou wouldst wrap rug round me and mak’ 
me so comfortable as could be. “I’ll have 
thee home in a jiffy!” thee’d say. And thou 
wouldst go out o’ thy way a mile or happen a 
couple of miles to get me there!’ 

“ ‘Of course I would, Becky, and glad to 
do it for you.’ 

“ ‘Weel, now, Doctor, when some poor body 


70 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


is getting to the end of the journey, and is 
trying, maybe in the dark, to find the right 
road, wouldn’t it be just a grand thing if thou 
couldst give them a lift homeward and heaven- 
ward — wouldn’t it? And thou often hast t’ 
chance o’ doing it/ 

‘Oh, but,’ I said, ‘that isn’t in my line. 
They would say to me, “Physician, heal 
thyself.” ’ 

“ ‘Nay, nay, I can tell thee summat better 
to say than that. Go to the Good Physician 
to heal thee, and then tell folks what he has 
done for thee, same as folks tell what thou 
hast done for them. It is a terrible thing to 
have the chance o’ doing it, and leaving it 
undone. Think abaht it. Doctor — aye, and 
pray abaht it.’ 

“Well, I could not get away from dear old 
Becky’s words. They stuck to me. And one 
night when your young minister was preaching 
I made up my mind and got, by God’s grace, 
into the right road. And many a poor soul 
will have reason to bless God for Becky’s 
words to me.” 

It was from the night nurse at the Work- 
house Infirmary that I heard the story of what 
the Doctor was doing. 

“A drunken man, staggering along the road, 
had reeled in front of a motor, and had been 


BECKY GOES HOME 


71 


knocked down and seriously injured. The 
Doctor came and did all that he could for him, 
and then sat by his bedside for an hour or two. 
I was moving quietly about when I saw that 
the man had recovered consciousness. 

‘‘Then very quietly and gently the Doctor 
bent over him. 

“ ‘You have not long to live,’ he said, ‘and 
I want you to listen whilst I try to tell you of 
the Saviour Jesus Christ.’ 

“The man turned his face away. Tt’s no 
good,’ he said. T have made just an awful 
mess of my life — drink — drink — don’t talk to 
a man like me.’ 

“But the Doctor went on. ‘Now, listen to 
the story of one who had made a mess of his 
life — ^had spent all in riotous living.’ 

“ ‘That’s just myself,’ the man groaned. 

“ ‘Well, this man said, “I will arise and go 
to my father.” ’ 

“The man turned and listened eagerly. 

“The Doctor went on. ‘ “And when he was 
yet a great way off his father saw him and 
had compassion, and ran, and kissed him.” 
And what do you think the prodigal said.?’ 

“ ‘Eh, I mind, I mind — my mither used to 
read me the story long ago. He said, “I am 
not worthy to be called thy son.” ’ 

“Then the Doctor went on again. ‘But the 


72 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


father said, “Bring forth the best robe and 
put it on him.” Now that is how God loves 
you — and what he longs to do for you,^ 

“The man put out his hand and laid it in 
the Doctor’s hand. 

“ ‘Man — is it true — is it true?’ 

“ Tt is what the Lord Jesus said. And it 
is what your mother believed.’ 

“So he lay — his hand in the Doctor’s hand. 

“Gradually, as I watched, a change came 
over his face. It was as if transfigured. And 
with his failing breath he muttered the words 
— ^broken as he gasped — ‘ “Had — compassion — 
on — ^him — and fell — on his neck — and — ^kissed 
him.” ’ 

“There was silence for a few minutes. And 
the Doctor said, ‘He is gone.’ ” 

So does dear old Becky’s influence live 
amongst us still. 

P.S. — have just heard that our young 
minister has become engaged to “Becky’s 
bairn.” 


VII 

A LIAR 


A n old college chum of mine had come 
to spend a day with me. It was long 
since we met, and we had many things 
to talk of as we sat together. He was stationed 
in a circuit that had come to have a bad name 
in the district — a circuit to which no man 
would go if he could help it; and from which 
he got away as soon as he could. For years 
things had not only been at a standstill, but 
steadily going down. In the Synod it was a 
storm center. The plain words of the chairman 
and the inquiry of secretaries were met with 
many replies from the lay representatives of 
the circuit. 

The chairman of the district, almost in 
despair, had asked my friend to tackle it as a 
kind of forlorn hope — and he had consented. 
He rather liked a fight — a big fellow, utterly 
fearless, who could put on a hippopotamus 
hide and defy abuse, and sneer, and sarcasm. 
Himself of a hot temper and quick-witted, he 
could give as good as he got, and rather better. 
Then came tidings of improvement. Things 
73 


74 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


had altered. The place was prospering and 
numbers were added to the church. It seemed 
hard to believe. Could any good thing come 
out of Nazareth 

Naturally enough our talk turned to such a 
surprising change. 

“How did you manage it?” I asked. 

Then he told me as good a story as I have 
heard for many a day. 

“As soon as I got there,” said he, “I felt 
there was an utter stagnation. Religiously the 
place was dead. There was no sign in service 
or anywhere else of the presence of God — 
scarcely any interest, much less enthusiasm. 
The first Quarterly meeting was just a bitter 
fault-finding — the only thing in which they 
were united was in attacking the minister. 

“I had been speaking of the sad condition of 
things when the leading member of the place, 
an old man who had been circuit steward for 
twenty years or more, got up with a growl. 

“ ‘What else can you expect when the Con- 
ference treats us as it does? Find a man that 
isn’t good enough for anywhere else, and 
they’ll send him to us. And now yovUve come!’ 

“ ‘Well, you have got as good as you de- 
serve,’ I flung out, ‘and I’m more sorry for the 
minister than for you.’ 

“You know I’m a hot-tempered man, and I 


A LIAR 


75 


certainly was roused. I never found it so hard 
to pronounce the benediction as I did after 
that meeting. It seemed almost a mockery to 
talk of the peace of God. I thought of Saint 
Paul’s words to the troublesome Galatians: If 
ye bite and devour one another, take heed 
that ye be not consumed one of another. 

“I sat late that night in my study, very 
angry, and muttered to myself, ‘A set of wild 
beasts. I will preach next Sunday and tell 
them some plain truths. I will give it them as 
hot and strong as I can make it.’ Then I 
turned to Saint John’s Epistle: If a man say 
1 love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. 
These two words will do well — A Liar. There 
is my text, anyhow. Then I went to bed. 

‘T confess I hurried from the breakfast table 
next morning, eager to begin. I flung off my 
coat and sat down in my shirt sleeves. My 
fists were clenched, my teeth were set. ‘There 
has to be a fight,’ I said, ‘and a pretty stiff one 
too, but there is no help for it.’ 

“I went over the members of the congrega- 
tion, and recalled what I had gathered of feud 
and quarrel and long sources of ill will. 

“The old man who had flung out his angry 
words at me — a martyr to the gout, that 
added to his irritability — had quarreled with 
his Methodist neighbor, whose fowls had found 


76 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


their way through a broken fence and scratched 
up the garden beds. He wrote an angry letter, 
threatening all sorts of damages unless the 
fence were repaired. The answer came back 
that the fence belonged to him, and he must 
repair it for himself. The fence had been re- 
paired by the old man, but the bill was sent 
to his neighbor. Then the matter got into the 
lawyer’s hands, and then into the county court. 
The case had gone against the old man and 
there were law costs to be paid, and henceforth 
an angry bitterness. I had got to know the 
neighbor, a quiet, decent man, the most 
intelligent member of my congregation, who 
himself would gladly have ended the dispute 
if any approach had been made to him. 

“Then there was the man at the boot and 
shoe shop — a local preacher — who threatened 
to withdraw his name from the Plan because I 
had refused to appoint him to the town pulpit. 

“ ‘And there’s another thing,’ he had said 
to me, angrily, ‘I work and contribute to keep 
up Methodism, and I expect the Methodists to 
deal with me before going anywhere else. I’ve 
got a claim on them, that’s what I say.’ 

“ ‘And what I say is that it’s rubbish; down- 
right nonsense. Nobody but a fool would talk 
like that,’ I said, for I was too vexed to check 
the words that came to my tongue. 


A LIAR 


77 


'You say that — you! And I help to keep 
you in the bread you eat and the house you 
live in!’ He was furious. 

“ ‘Yes, I say that, and I mean it. Do you 
go to the wholesale manufacturer who is a 
Methodist, or do you go where you can get the 
best goods at the most reasonable rate?’ 

“ ‘That’s different,’ he snapped. 

“ ‘No, it isn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s just the same.’ 

“Well, the fire was not put out by that 
encounter. The furnace was only heated seven 
times hotter than it was wont to be heated. 

“In another case there was a family feud 
that had gone on for years over a great-uncle’s 
will, which, on one side, was held to be the 
result of undue influence, and neither father 
nor mother nor any of the children in the one 
family would speak to the family of the other. 

“I sat and recalled one and another, and 
saw that my work was cut out for me. It was 
time for somebody to say some plain things 
about it, cost what it might. I was ready for 
it, and fiercely I headed my manuscript with 
the text: 

“A Liar.” 

Then I took up the Bible and turned over its 
pages. Before me, without seeing it, was the 
Hymn of Love — I Corinthians xiii — ^Love 
suffereth long and is kind. 


78 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


‘T started. The words seemed to be on fire 
and burned into my soul. They seemed to 
take shape, and it was as if one stood before 
me as of old when Nathan the prophet rose be- 
fore David with pointed finger and look as of 
a lightning flash, and thundered. Thou art the 
man. 

‘T was broken — crushed — overwhelmed. God 
was in that place. It was his voice that spoke 
to me — to me: If a man say, I love God, and 
hateth his brother, he is a liar, I had been hard 
and bitter. I had flung anger for their anger, 
contempt for their contempt, hatred for then- 
hatred. I fell on my knees and poured my 
soul before God in an agony of prayer. How 
long I knelt I don’t know, but I rose from my 
knees to feel that the fight was over. The 
fierceness was gone, and there came to me a 
great spirit of love and yearning helpfulness. 
It was really as if I had become a new creature 
in Christ Jesus. Time is nothing when God 
begins to work a miracle — and it was a miracle, 
and nothing less, that was wrought in me, as 
complete as it was sudden. I was a wonder to 
myself. There is no other word for it — a new 
creature in Christ Jesus. 

‘T seemed now to see what to do; my way 
was plain. It was as if the Spirit of Love was 
the Spirit of Wisdom too. I felt carried away 


A LIAR 


79 


by a force that was not of myself, but of the 
Spirit that possessed me. 

“First I went to the house of my grumpy 
old friend, who seemed the bitterest and surliest 
of them all. I found him sitting in the parlor, 
his foot propped up on a stool, wrapped round 
with cotton wool, and covered with a shawl. 
The excitement of the meeting had brought on 
a fierce attack of the old enemy. 

“ T suppose you’ve called to talk about that 
meeting yesterday,’ he began, in his grumpiest 
tone. 

“Hurried as I had been I yet had managed 
to hit upon my method. 

“ ‘No,’ I said, as pleasantly as I could, ‘I 
want you to be good enough to let me see your 
chrysanthemums.’ 

“I had heard that his hobby was flowers, 
and that he had skillfully managed to produce 
some really wonderful blooms. His face 
changed. 

“ ‘Of course, of course,’ he said. And the 
tone of his voice was very different. ‘They are 
in there. Sorry I can’t come with you.’ And 
he pointed to a glass door that led into a green- 
house. 

“I was honest in my utterances as I went 
from one to another. ‘Wonderful — wonderful 
— I never saw anything like it.’ 


80 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


“I heard the old man’s appreciation of my 
praise. ‘They are fine, aren’t they.^^’ he said. 
T’ll give you one of them if you like.’ 

“I had come back again. ‘It is very good 
of you, and I shall treasure it, I assure you; 
but will you let it be where it is for you to 
look after it for me.^’ 

“He hesitated. ‘Yes — ^yes. I will remember 
it is yours, and take extra care of it.’ 

“Then I sat down by his side, and ventured 
to lay my hand on his. 

“ ‘Do you know why I have called to see you?’ 

“ ‘I thought you came to see the flowers.’ 

“ ‘So I did — but I want you to help me.’ 

“I am afraid he took it as an appeal for a 
subscription, he had been so used to that, and 
his face hardened again. 

“ ‘Yes, I want you to help me,’ I went on. 
‘At the meeting last night I said some bitter 
things — some things that were lacking in love. 
I want you to forgive me. And I want you to 
‘ help me not to say things like that again.’ 

“His lips quivered, and the tears crept into 
his eyes. ‘I will help you if — if — ^you will help 
me.’ 

“Our hands clasped — and our eyes met. 

“ ‘Well, now, shall we two agree that, God 
helping us, we will try to live a life of love and 
glad helpfulness?’ 


A LIAR 


81 


“We sat in silence for a while, but the pres- 
sure of his hand on mine meant more than words. 

“Then I fell on my knees at his side and 
poured out my soul’s confession. My voice was 
choked with feeling, and it was hard to get out 
the words, but I knew that the Spirit of God 
was pleading within us both for the love that 
was coming — indeed, had come. 

“Oh, the change on the old man’s face, the 
grip of the hand, the tears of joy that streamed 
down his cheeks. 

“ ‘Well, father,’ I said, ‘father, pray for me 
and I will pray for you — and we will help each 
other.’ 

“ ‘God bless you, my son, God bless you,’ 
said the old man. 

“I had got to the door when I turned back 
again. 

“ ‘May I do what I like with the lovely 
flower you have given me.^’ I asked. 

“ ‘Of course — of course; it is yours to do 
what you like with.’ 

“ ‘Then will you let me take it to the neigh- 
bor next door, with your kind regards? It 
will be a beginning, won’t it?’ 

“There was a moment’s hesitancy — a con- 
flict that was soon ended. Then he laughed. 
‘Yes — ^yes; do. It will be a beginning. And 
with my kind regards.’ 


82 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


“So I hurried to the neighbor next door, 
and set the flower before him. 

“ ‘What do you think of that?’ I asked. 
Tine, isn’t it?’ 

“ ‘Yes, very fine. Has he really given it to 
you?’ For he knew the only place from whence 
it could come. 

“ ‘No, no,’ I said, ‘not to me. He has sent 
it to you with his kind regards.’ 

“ ‘Sent it to me — to 

“ ‘Yes, to you — and with his kind regards. 
He says it is a sort of a beginning; but I think 
he means an ending, too. Write him a letter 
— or go in to thank him.’ 

“ ‘I will — I will. I have wanted to have 
done with this wretched quarrel long ago.’ 

“And so that feud ended. 

“I tell you I could scarcely keep from shout- 
ing my praise to God as I went along the road 
and so home to dinner. 

“Later I called on my friend at the boot 
and shoe shop. His manner was not pleasant 
by any means. I managed to mend matters by 
choosing a pair of boots of which I was in need. 

“That over, I sat down at his counter. 

“ ‘Look here,’ I said, T want you to help 
me. It is a very particular matter, and the 
success of what I am going to do will depend 
much on your part in it.’ 


A LIAR 


83 


“I was sincere enough, but such preeminence 
was to him a morsel that he enjoyed. 

‘‘ ‘I am going to have a praise meeting next 
Wednesday week, and I shall ask you to speak. 
You and I will have to get ready for it, and 
by God’s help we shall make a success of it. 
Now, I will tell you what I am going to do. 
I am going to say to myself every night and 
every morning: “Oh, God, how much have I 
got that thou couldst take away!” And I am 
going to run over all I can think of. Eyes, 
ears and reason, health, home, the heavenly 
Father’s care and love — the gift of the glorious 
Saviour and of the Blessed Spirit. Now I 
want you to do the same thing when you get 
up in the morning and when you lie down at 
night. And tell them at the praise meeting 
what you are doing and how you get on.’ 

“He rose to it at once. ‘Fine, fine,’ he said, 
thinking more perhaps of the chance of the 
speech than of what it all meant, and little 
dreaming what it was going to do for him. 

“Yet remained the other two — and I felt 
that this was altogether a more difficult matter. 
However, my way opened before me as if a 
Spirit of Wisdom had come with the Spirit of 
Love — ^the Love that never faileth. So I called 
upon one of them and asked if he would be 
good enough to come to tea with me. He 


84 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


would be rendering a great service if he would, 
I said, and I should feel much obliged. Then 
I made my way to the other, and he too 
promised to come. They arrived, and were 
startled to find each other sitting at the table 
together, although neither had spoken to the 
other. It was a stiff and formal time, and I 
had as much as I could do to talk of all sorts 
of commonplace things. After tea I began. 
‘Now, gentlemen, draw your chairs up to the 
fire.’ 

‘T need not repeat all I said — it was to the 
effect that the work of God was at a standstill; 
that there was a spirit among us chilling, 
killing the holy influences; that God would 
have us prosperous, happy, blest; that it was 
an awful responsibility to check and thwart 
the Spirit of God — an awful thing for anyone 
to have to settle when he came to stand at the 
Judgment Seat. I spoke out of the fullness of 
my heart. ‘Now I want your help,’ I pleaded. 
‘I want you to have done with this old feud. 
For the sake of God, for the sake of his glory! 
How could the outsider believe in our religion 
if in the church we are at strife with one 
another?’ Then I rose, and looking from one 
to the other, I said, ‘Will you kneel with me in 
prayer?’ And again I poured out my heart 
before God. When we rose it was enough. 


A LIAR 


85 


Their hands met. Tears were in the eyes of 
each, and in mine too. 

“ T am going to have a praise meeting on 
Wednesday week. Will you come and join it?’ 

“Well, the praise meeting was a glorious 
time. The hymns went grandly. My shoe- 
shop friend had, I think, prepared a speech, 
but I don’t think he delivered it. He began 
with two verses of the hymn: 

“Oh, bless the Lord my soul. 

Let all within me join: 

And aid my tongue to bless his name 
Whose favors are divine. 

“Oh, bless the Lord, my soul. 

Nor let his mercies lie 
Forgotten in unthankfulness. 

And without praises die.” 

Then he went on: ‘My friends — I am ashamed 
of myself — ashamed. I seem to have forgotten 
all his benefits. But — but’ — and his voice 
broke so that he could scarcely speak for a 
moment or two — ‘but — it has come — it has 
come — the spirit of praise.’ And he startled 
the congregation with a shout of ‘Glory!’ 

“My old friend had managed to creep up 
on a couple of sticks. He spoke with a glow 
and a gladness that set every heart singing. 
He told of what his religion had been to him 


86 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


years before, a power of God in his life, his 
work, and a power unto salvation of those 
about him. ‘Somehow,’ said he, ‘it had gone 
— the peace, and joy, the sunshine and song 
of it all had gone. But it has come back 
again,’ he cried. ‘I don’t want to go to heaven 
as long as I can find heaven down here — ^yet 
I am ready to cry. Lord, now lettest thou thy 
servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have 
seen thy salvation.’ 

“There was a lull in the speaking. Then 
one rose and said only, ‘Praise God!’ — and he 
sat down again in the midst of his family. 
Another rose, his voice choked with emotion 
as he said: ‘Will you praise God for what he 
has done for me?’ And we did, with a hymn 
that swept the place with rapture. 

“From that day we never looked back. 
Conversions began amongst us, and the two 
families that had been so long at enmity met 
together as members of the church, and all 
joined my class — and became workers in the 
Sunday school. And since then two of the 
cousins have become engaged, and I am to 
marry them.” 

“Well, that is the story,” said my friend. 
“I never preached the sermon on the text I 
had written. My soul was filled with wonder- 


A LIAR 


87 


ing, adoring praise. You know/’ he finished, 
“a man does not like being called a liar. It 
is a terrible word that I had prepared for 
others, little thinking it should come to me as 
it did — a sort of boomerang. Yes — it came 
straight back with a force that crushed me — 
If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother — 
he is a liar.^* 


VIII 


AN OLD MAN’S TALE 

I T was in Wales, in the midst of some of 
its loveliest scenery. I was seated on 
a fallen fir tree, a magnificent specimen 
that some fierce gale had uprooted from the 
rocky ridge on which it stood. In front of 
me rose the slopes of Cader Idris. The river 
Mawddwy gleamed all in silver in the sun- 
shine; and down the valley between hills of 
heather and gorse I caught a glimpse of the 
sea. Just below me a heron stood motionless 
in the stream, and the water-fowl swam out 
from the bulrushes. Absorbed and charmed 
by the beauty of it all, I did not notice that 
an old man had seated himself on the fir tree 
until his greeting startled me. 

‘‘A grand bit of scenery,” said he, with a 
Welsh accent; “indeed, indeed, it is very 
fine.” 

I was unwilling to have the solitude thus 
broken, and somewhat reluctantly turned to 
respond to his greeting. He came nearer me. 
“You are not a Welshman?” 

“No,” said I. 


88 


AN OLD MAN’S TALE 


89 


‘‘Ah!” said he, “it is a pity — a pity.” 

“Do you think one need be Welsh to enjoy 
its scenery 

“Well,” he replied, with a charming gentle- 
ness, “you need be a Welshman to claim it as 
your own.” 

“Not a bit of it,” I laughed; “not a bit of 
it. The beauty and glory of God’s sun and 
God’s mountains and God’s fair world are for 
all men alike. He has no favorites except 
that we are all his favorites.” 

He was silent for a while, thrusting his stick 
into the peaty soil. Then, as he turned to 
me, his face shone. 

“Indeed, indeed, it is true, gloriously true — 
we are all his favorites. It is a strange tale 
how I came to find it.” 

Deep calleth unto deep. At once I felt that 
flowing of soul which is the true communion. 
The doors of the innermost heart are opened, 
and we find ourselves in the banqueting 
chamber where the blessed Master ever seeks 
to enter. The silence itself was a conversation, 
a flowing together, as when two streams meet. 
He repeated the words: *‘We are all his 
favorites . The glow of his face and the glad- 
ness of his tone told of the depths from which 
the utterance came. Very quickly we were 
talking of things most sacred, most divine; and 


90 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


he told how he came to know God as his own. 

“My father was a Calvinistic preacher of 
the old school and the old style,” he began, 
“a great preacher. I have seen him caught 
by the gale of the Hwyl, as we call it, until 
the congregation was swayed like a field of 
corn, and the excitement broke out in a great 
shout: Gogoniant, Glory! A man most gentle 
in everything else, it was strange to me as a 
lad how fierce and ferocious he became in 
religious discussion.” 

He was silent for a while. 

“It is strange, is it not, very strange, that 
the worst side of a man so often comes out 
when he argues about religion — intolerant, 
utterly uncharitable, blind to any view but 
his own.” Again he paused for a moment. 
“Was it so in the early days with the apostle 
John, the apostle of love, who was aforetime 
the Son of Thunder? I have sometimes 
wondered if the sight of the crucifixion of the 
Saviour melted and subdued him into a life- 
long tenderness. The poet Wordsworth seems 
to have undergone a similar change by the 
sight of the horrors of the French Revolution. 
The fierce revolutionist became the gentle high 
priest of nature.” 

I must not linger over the asides with which 
the old man interrupted his story. They were 


AN OLD MAN’S TALE 


91 


frequent and full of interest, and very re- 
luctantly I must omit them. 

Again he went on. ‘‘My mother was one 
of the sweetest and gentlest women God ever 
made. I was the only son, and under such 
influences could scarcely fail to have the matter 
of religion continually in my thoughts. It 
controlled my earliest life. All I did was 
shaped by the one great longing that I might 
be one of the elect. The awful alternative 
was ever before me — an eternity of hell! How 
vividly my father pictured it; and how it 
burned its way into my childish imagination 
and haunted my dreams ! To me the Almighty 
was a consuming fire. How strange it seemed 
that at the breakfast table we were all so 
happy, and there was such a kindliness over 
all. Then came the family prayer, and it was 
as if a thunder-cloud had blotted out the sun- 
shine. It was a horrible confession of such 
iniquity as I never could understand in such 
dear, good souls as they were. It was only 
to God that they must come with groans! 
It was only before him that they were awful 
transgressors, snatched as brands from the 
burning. So I grew up a lad of some eight or 
nine years. I had never done anything con- 
sciously wrong. My father would have kept 
me from it, even if my heart had prompted it. 


92 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


Then came the event of my life that wrought 
the great change.” The old man paused. ‘T 
am talking a great deal about myself when 
perhaps I should be better listening to you.” 

“Do go on,” I entreated. “I have seldom 
heard a story that has interested me more 
deeply.” 

“Well, as a boy I was very fond of reading, 
and had dipped into most of the books in my 
father’s little library — ^mostly treatises of Cal- 
vinistic theology — and dull reading it was. 
But one day I came across Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s 
Progress.’ It was illustrated; and nothing 
could have been more dreadful than those 
pictures — a grim giant Pope sat under a tree 
biting his nails; Apollyon stood with a fiery 
dart against a background of thunder and 
lightning.” The old man smiled in the midst 
of his narrative. “Good John Bunyan would 
have been amazed if he had dreamed what 
the book, which has been blest to so many 
thousands of souls, did for me! 

“A life of John Bunyan was bound up with 
the volume, and it was that which arrested 
me. There were extracts from his own writings 
that graphically told of his early life — a profane 
tinker, 

“So I thought this was the way, the only 
way for me to find what he found. How could 


AN OLD MAN’S TALE 


93 


I escape from the City of Destruction unless 
I had lived in it? And how could I live in it? 
That was the great question that filled my 
thoughts. It was a revelation. My mind was 
made up — 1 would he a profane tinker, 
“Cautiously I set about it. 

“ ‘Father,’ I asked, ‘what is profane?^ 

“ ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘taking God’s name in vain.’ 
“Happily I did not know what that meant, 
and so escaped that evil. But a tinker! I 
took the book to my mother. ‘I want you to 
tell me what a tinker is, mother.’ 

“ ‘Oh, a sort of gypsy, you know,’ said she. 
‘They have no home, but wander about and 
set up a tent in the lanes and woods, where 
they light their fire and cook their food. I 
am afraid they are not always honest. Some- 
times I have missed some of my fowls when 
they have been about, and I think they must 
have taken them. Sometimes they come 
mending kettles and pans.’ 

“That was enough. I would be a tinker, 
like John Bunyan. So I too might live in 
the City of Destruction and escape from it as 
he did. Eagerly I waited and watched until 
one day I found an encampment of gypsies 
not far from our house. I had finished my 
supper and gone up to bed. Then I stole 
down and slipped out at the back door as 


94 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


quietly as I could, and hurried away to the 
gypsies. A tall man had just come back with 
a hare that he had snared. A woman was 
busy about the crock that hung over the fire 
of sticks. Three or four children gathered 
about her as I burst upon them. 

‘‘ ‘Please, sir,’ I said, ‘I want to be a gypsy.’ 

“He stared at me. ‘It costs money, it does, 
to be a gypsy. Have you got any?’ 

“Alas! I had no money, and I shook my 
head sadly. 

“ ‘Have you had any supper?’ 

“ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I have had my supper.’ 

“ ‘A good thing too,’ said he, ‘for there 
isn’t too much of it.’ Then he looked at me 
from head to foot, and turned to the woman. 
‘Let him take off his clothes and lie down 
on the straw, and put the sheepskin over 
him.’ 

“I was going to say my prayers before I 
undressed, but I remembered that I was in 
the City of Destruction, and, of course, nobody 
prayed there. 

“I thought of my father and mother, and 
wondered if they would miss me. Yet what 
was that compared to their joy in finding me 
one day escaped and saved like John Bunyan? 
So I lay down, and was soon fast asleep. 

“I woke the next morning to find the gypsies 


AN OLD MAN’S TALE 


95 


had gone, tent and all, and even the sheepskin 
with which they had covered me. Cold and 
numb, I stirred to find my clothes had been 
stolen, and by my side lay an old smock frock 
and a tattered pair of trousers that I had seen 
on one of the lads. 

“What was I to do? It was very early in 
the morning when I hurried home and knocked 
at the door, which was still locked. Later my 
mother had come down and found me lying 
faint on the doorstep. I came to myself in 
my warm bed, with my mother sitting holding 
my hand, and my father kneeling at the bed- 
side in prayer. 

“Then I sat up and sobbed it all out — how 
I had tried to be a profane tinker like John 
Bunyan, and wanted to live in the City of 
Destruction, that I might escape and find what 
Bunyan found. 

“My father stood bewildered, as if the thing 
were beyond his understanding. It was my 
mother who comforted me. 

“As I leaned against her side she read to 
me the words of the Lord Jesus on the 
Mount. 

“Then she talked to me as I had never heard 
her talk before. There was a look in her face 
such as I had never seen. It was as if she had 
two chambers in her soul — one where she kept 


96 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


what she ought to believe; and one of nature — 
her own nature and its communion with the 
nature of God’s world. In one was the religion 
of her creed, the religion of my father’s sermons 
and prayers, where she sang a doleful hymn 
about ‘God’s frowning face/ But now there 
opened to me a chamber of her own nature 
that faced the sunny south, where the birds 
sang and the flowers bloomed, and God was 
the Father-God with a mother’s heart. All 
that my mother was to me God was to her. 
Only that which was most gracious and beauti- 
ful and altogether lovely could enter there. 
Yes, it was indeed as if there were the God of 
her creed, and the God whom her own tender 
love had revealed to her, for he that lovetk 
knoweth God, 

“The exposme of the night and the excite- 
ment had left me with a feverish chill, and 
I leaned against her as she spoke most tenderly. 

“ ‘No, no, my son. We need not enter the 
City of Destruction to find the Father,’ said 
she. ‘Go forth and sit on the hillside, and ask 
the blessed Lord to come and talk to you as 
he came of old. He will teach you of the love 
of God as he taught them, in the flowers, and 
the birds. And he will teach you to see him 
in my love to you.’ And again she repeated 
to me the words that have become sacred to 


AN OLD MAN’S TALE 


97 


me as the great revelation — the Father-God 
with a mother* s heart** 

There was a long silence. Then the old man 
finished his story. 

‘T come here still on the hillside, and find 
the blessed Lord waiting for me. I hear the 
great love of the Father sung by the birds, and 
their music sets my heart singing too. And 
the flowers breathe the fragrance of his love 
into my soul. I find, above all, the memory 
of my mother’s love comes to fill me with a 
blessed assurance — your heavenly Father careth 
for you. Yes, it is true, gloriously true. He 
has no favorites except that we are all his 
favorites.” 


IX 


THE SAVED SOUL THAT IS LOST 

A Cornish Gillyflower 

A FRIEND had sent me an apple — a 
Comish gillyflower — a variety now 
almost extinct; for of species, alas, 
like some of my books, we have to say, “They 
have their day and cease to be.” I could see 
my old friends, the farmer and his wife, from 
whom it had come — ^he with a face ruddy and 
round, as one of his own quarrendens; she with 
a face like a russet, rich, brown, and wrinkled 
because it was ripe. 

The curious law of association led me to a 
story that came back from long ago — too 
quaint to be forgotten. A young man, whose 
father was stationed at Rochester, sent a 
strange parcel to a friend of his in London. In 
it were an apple from a Kentish orchard, a 
skull, and a small pocket Bible. Here were 
three subjects thrust upon him for meditation 
— an apple, that he might think of the fall of 
man; a skull, that he might think of man’s 
mortality; a Bible, that he might learn of 
98 


THE SAVED SOUL THAT IS LOST 99 


man’s redemption. In the Bible was this in- 
scription: “To W. H. Rule, with R. TreflFry’s 
love and best wishes. Let him read the book 
with care; pause frequently, consider seriously, 
and pray fervently; and he will find it the 
power of God to salvation.” “This oddly 
assorted present,” wrote Dr. Rule, in his 
recollections, “had been preceded by a letter 
wherein my friend informed me of his conver- 
sion to God; and this gift of a Bible decided 
me to read again the sacred volume for his 
sake. I did so, and very soon was reading it 
for my own.” 

But to return to my Cornish gillyflower. It 
was long since I had tasted one. So I peeled 
it carefully, and cut it. Bah! At the heart of 
it lay a wretched grub that spread rottenness 
through it all, and I flung it down. 

I thought of the blossom that had come in 
May, a dainty bloom of pink and white. Some 
creature had settled on it for a moment and 
left a tiny speck. Then drinking the rain and 
sunshine of heaven, the blossom grew into an 
apple. It hung as fair in outward seeming as 
any. But at its heart was the grub that turned 
it into rottenness. 

Then it was that I recalled some words I had 
read lately in John Wesley’s sermons — words 
that arrested and amazed me. Christianity has 


100 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


in it the elements of its own destruction. A 
thing startling, terrible. Could it be true? 
Is not Christianity mighty with the might of 
the Almighty — defiant alike of world, and flesh, 
and devil? Is it not that against which the 
gates of hell cannot prevail? Yet within it the 
elements of its own destruction! 

And there came the vivid illustration — my 
gillyflower with the grub at its core — rotten. 

What the Lord Jesus Said 

He that saveth his soul shall lose it. So is it 
in the marginal reference of the Revised 
Version. 

Whosoever would save his soul would lose it. 
Let us set before us the occasion on which it 
was spoken. The Lord Jesus had told his 
disciples how that he must go up to Jerusalem, 
to be betrayed, to be spat upon, to be scourged, 
to be killed. 

Then Peter, thinking only that Christ had 
come to restore again the kingdom of Israel, 
sprang up and laid that irreverent hand upon 
him, ‘‘took hold of him and began to rebuke 
him.” We read but a little later that Jesus 
rebuked the devil. Think, then, of Peter 
rebuking the Lord! And when Jesus had 
looked round about him with indignation, he 
flung at Peter those terrible words — Get thee 


THE SAVED SOUL THAT IS LOST 101 


hence, Satan He who saveth his soul shall 
lose it. 

There it is. Salvation is ours only in pro- 
portion as we die to ourselves and give our- 
selves away in love. Trace our holy religion to 
its source, its spring, and we find it in the 
heart of the Eternal Father. God so loved the 
world that he gave his only begotten Son. Be 
sure of this : our religion is not of God unless it 
shapes itself after the pattern seen in the 
Mount. Loved with a love so wonderful, 
redeemed at a cost so infinite, there is but one 
proof of our religion that can suffice — hereby 
perceive we the love of God that he laid down 
his life for us. Then, what follows, irresistibly, 
of necessity.? We ought to lay down our lives 
for our brothers. 

As long as we stop short of that, what is our 
religion but an aggravated selfishness — saving 
our souls and going to heaven when we die? 
So often it is that and nothing more. And 
there stands the great demand and command 
— that we lay down our lives for our brothers. 
Alas, our very religion may but intensify the 
selfishness from which the Lord Jesus came to 
save us. The urgency of the appeal to men to 
seek their salvation, and the promises of 
religion, can scarcely fail to minister to our 
selfishness unless it leads to a great and glad 


102 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


surrender of ourselves in loving sacrifice to 
those about us. 

How can we know the Fatherhood of God 
except as it leads us into true brotherliness 
with all men? He that loveth not his brother, 
what can he know of God’s love to him? 
There is the element of destruction in our 
Christianity. There is the grub that turns our 
religion into rottenness. He that saveth his 
soul shall lose it. He who gives his soul away 
in love shall find it. 

Pray God, men, with all the soul that is in 
us, to be saved from the selfishness of our 
salvation. 


Moses and Paul 

Here are the two greatest men in the Bible 
— in the Old Testament, Moses, the man of 
God; in the New Testament, Saint Paul. 
Once, intimates in their religion; later, far 
apart in many things. Moses laying down the 
Levitical Law with its strict injunctions as to 
minute observances, after added to until they 
became a yoke grievous to be borne. Saul, 
once a Pharisee of the Pharisees, fiercely exact 
in obedience to every jot and tittle of the law 
— later Saint Paul, with his great declaration 
of justification by faith: contending at the 
risk of his life and beset by every peril, to free 


THE SAVED SOUL THAT IS LOST 103 


the Christian converts from the tyranny of 
these observances. 

Yet Moses and Saint Paul meet at one point. 
Moses, for the people’s sake, prays that he 
may be blotted out of the Book of Life. Saint 
Paul can wish himself accursed for his brother’s 
sake. 

Think of it soberly, solenmly — the Son of 
God is made a curse for us: and the two 
greatest men in the church’s history are willing 
to be accursed for the people’s sake! Alas, we 
turn to ourselves, and what do we find? So 
often, so very often, only a blind selfishness 
that is content to sing: 

‘‘Nothing is worth a thought beneath, 

But how I may escape the death 
That never, never dies.” 

There is an exhaustive emphasis on that 
capital I. That, and that only, the one con- 
cern of our thought, of our prayer, of our hope, 
of our salvation. Surely this is the truth that 
needs to be burned into our very soul. What 
is to-day the supreme hindrance to the triumph 
of Christianity? Put your finger right on it. 
Contentment with a personal salvation. There 
is the element of its destruction — the grub at 
the core. 

Be sure of this — the religion that does not 


104 . 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


save a man out of selfishness into love will 
never save him out of hell into heaven. What- 
ever his creed, his belief, whatever his Sunday 
services, prayers, hymns — he that loveth not 
ahideth in death. Love is more than the perfect 
tense of the verb to live — ^it is the only tense. 
He that loveth not, liveth not. This is Saint 
Paul’s religion — ^he died to himself that he 
might live. I live, yet not I. That “I” is 
crucified with Christ, that Christ may live 
over again his life of love. 

It is all summed up in that word — The 
church which is his body. My body is the 
means by which my spirit communicates with 
the world. I may have a thought in my mind, 
but what is it to anyone until my tongue 
utters it? I may have a purpose in my heart, 
but what matters how noble or generous it is 
until my hand fulfills it? Think of all the great 
purposes of God’s love waiting to find in us the 
body through which it can flow into the world! 
So it is written of the Lord — “A body hast 
thou prepared me. Lo, I come to do thy will.” 

Will it come? When, because a man is a 
Christian, he will be the first to go out of his 
way to do you a good turn? When, because 
a man is called by the name of Christ, he will 
not — ^he dare not — take an advantage of 
another’s ignorance or helplessness? When, 


THE SAVED SOUL THAT IS LOST 105 


because a man is a Christian, he is compelled 
to check the harsh temper, the unkind word, 
and is incapable of bitterness or ill will? 

The only way to flee from the wrath to come 
is to flee from the things that make a hell in 
this life — ill-temper, meanness, greed, selfishness. 

Will it come? When our religion means a 
life without fretfujness or fear, a life over 
which broods the perpetual calm of perfect 
charity? 

Pray God, O man, pray God with all the 
soul that is in us, to save us from the selfishness 
of our salvation. 

Of the Apple that Never Rots 

A parable this, which I have published in 
another form, but the book containing it is 
now out of print, and, therefore, I will not 
apologize for its resurrection. 

It chanced that in a certain town there lived 
an old man, grumpy, ill-tempered, miserable — 
seeing only the bad in everything and seeing 
it worse than it was. Religious, very — strict in 
his churchgoing; and so orthodox that he 
quarreled fiercely with every one who did not 
agree with him. Now, it came to pass that 
this man of misery met with a simple country- 
man, whose face was sunshine and whose life 
was a song. 


106 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


‘T cannot think how it is that you are so 
happy,” said the old man. “You are poor, 
yet you never complain; and you are as happy 
as the day is long — the happiest man I know. 
What is it? Tell me the secret.” 

“Ah,” thought the simple countryman, “and 
you are the most miserable!” Then right 
cheerily he said, “I will tell you the secret 
certainly — I live on apples. You know that an 
apple was once an apple of death, but mine 
I call the apple of life.” 

“Tell me, do, where I can get a tree of those 
apples. Will they do as much for me as they 
have done for you?” 

“They will,” said the simple countryman, 
“if you plant them in the right place. It all 
depends on that. I will give you a tree of 
those apples, and then you can have as many 
of them as you like.” 

So the simple countryman gave the man of 
misery a tree of the apples of life. But the 
seasons came, and went, and never a blossom 
was there — much less an apple. 

Again they met. 

“Oh,” said the man of misery, “I planted 
that tree, but it has borne no fruit.” 

“Where did you plant it?” said the country- 
man. 

“Plant it? Why, in my own garden, of course.” 


THE SAVED SOUL THAT IS LOST 107 


“Ah, that is the mistake you made. You 
can only get those apples if you plant in some- 
body else’s garden.” 

“Why, then, somebody else would get them.” 

“No, you would get them then.” 

And the man of misery went on his way with 
a sigh. “I can’t see that.” 

“I wish he could see it,” said the simple 
countryman. 

And he went on his way with a song. 

The apples that never rot are those that we 
plant in other people’s gardens. 

He who saveth his soul shall lose it. He who 
giveth away his soul in love shall find it. 


X 


THREE HOPELESS THINGS IN GOD’S 
WORLD 

T here are three hopeless things in the 
world. 

What are they? 

A Desert. — Heaven’s sunshine received, and 
never turned into beauty and blessing — never 
yielding flower, tree, fruit, corn — a blinding 
blaze of wilderness. 

A Swamp. — Heaven’s showers received, and 
never sent down in rippling streams to refresh 
the flowered banks: to turn the mill wheel and 
grind the corn: to gladden and cleanse the 
city, and then going singing to the sea. 

A poisonous swamp. 

A Pharisee. — The man who takes the love 
of God and turns it into that which swells his 
sense of superiority, a blind indifference to 
those about him, a scorn for those who are not 
as he is. The grace of God never given away 
in love, in brotherliness, in glad surrender for 
the service of those about him. 

How vividly has the Lord Jesus given us 
108 


THREE HOPELESS THINGS 109 


the man in his picture of him — a mass of 
swollen capital I ! 

And he spake this parable unto certain 
which trusted in themselves and despised 
others. “The Pharisee stood and prayed thus 
with himself: ‘God, I thank thee that I am 
not as other men are, ... or even as this 
publican. I fast twice in the week. I give 

tithes of all that I possess.’ ” I — I — There 

it begins. There it ends. 

Oh, man, it were better to feed well than to 
fast if fasting is going to fatten thy conceit. 
It were better to keep thy money if giving only 
goes to swell thy pride. 

For that man what terrible doom waits? 

The Lord Jesus could find hope for the out- 
cast, for the publican and sinner. But for him 
who took the grace of God and turned it into 
a selfish salvation came those words, the most 
terrible that ever fell from his lips — “Ye 
generation of vipers, how shall ye escape the 
damnation of hell!” 

All life is a matter of receiving and dis- 
tributing. To receive without distributing is 
congestion, disease, death. To distribute with- 
out receiving is consumption, waste, death. 

And in all things the highest is capable of 
the greatest corruption. You can get a rotten- 


110 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


ness out of a stick that you cannot get out of 
a stone. You can get a rottenness out of an 
egg that you cannot get out of a stick. You 
can get a corruption out of religion that is of 
all the deadliest and worst — religion received 
and never given away in love. 


XI 

A PARABLE 

I WAS wandering along the coast, looking 
down the cliffs, decked with sea daisies 
where they sloped to the steep masses of 
granite touched here and there with soft lichens 
into dainty green and gold. Below spread the 
yellow sands where flocked the gulls and 
whence stretched a long ridge of rocks. 

I sat and gave myself up to the glory of it 
all — the blue, blue sky flecked with soft sum- 
mer clouds, and then the sea. It needs the sea 
to give the sense of the infinite. A sea this of 
deepest blue, with patches of indigo, where the 
rocks, with shaggy weed, lie underneath — then 
an emerald green, as it sweeps in over the 
sands. A crested wave that sent its ripples 
breaking into dance and song — nature edges 
her skirts with lace. 

The coastguard came on his way, and 
presently stood at my side. 

“A funny thing happened on those rocks,” 
he began, “a thing you could hardly believe, 
but for all that it is true enough.” 

Ill 


11^ 


THE ORTHODOX DEVHL. 


I scarcely cared to have the fascination of 
the scene, and the luxury of my solitude, in- 
truded upon thus; but there was no help for 
it. He sat down at my side, and went on with 
his story. 

“One day — ’tis years agone now — an Austrian 
barque was driven ashore on those rocks. We 
fetched the rocket apparatus, and at the first 
shot sent the rope right into the rigging. But 
when those fellows aboard of her heard the gun 
fired, they thought we were a set of savages 
wanting to kill them, to get what we could out 
of the ship and cargo for our own. 

“Away they went, scuttling about the ship 
like a lot of rats — anywhere for a bit of safety. 
It was a thing to see, and no mistake. There 
were the waves sweeping about her, and we 
knew she would soon have gone to pieces, and 
all the time there was the rope within their 
reach that could bring them all safe ashore. 

“We shouted and tried to signal to them 
what they were to do, but it only made them 
the more frightened of us. I couldn’t stand it 
any longer. I swung myself on the rope and 
went away down to them, hand over hand, in 
a hurry. There on the rocket apparatus was 
a board with directions in French and Ger- 
man what to do. I shoved the thing down 
amongst them. 


A PARABLE 


IIS 

“ ‘There/ I said, ‘you silly fellows, reed 
that.'' 

“They guessed what I meant, and came 
round it, spelling it out amongst them. Then 
they turned to each other trying to explain 
the thing. 

“ ‘Here,’ I cried out, amidst the roar of the 
storm, ‘don’t stand there reading it over and 
over. Take hold of the rope. Reading about 
it won’t get you ashore.’ 

“Then one and another crept nearer, and 
the first of them was sent ashore in the 
breeches-buoy. When they saw him waving 
his hands safely on the cliff, it was a fight who 
should be the next. Well, we got them one by 
one all safe ashore. 

“Then they thought we were angels instead 
of devils. And they flung their arms about us 
and kissed us on both cheeks, like the men 
foreigners do.” 

The coastguard-man had gone his way, but 
the story lingers with me still — a parable. 

Fools indeed were they who thought the 
board of directions was to be read and nothing 
more. But alas, how very often the story is 
true of us! Read the board as carefully and 
eagerly as they might, that could not save 
them. 


114 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


Heaven has sent us the saving apparatus — 
and, alas, how many of us are content to read 
of it! 

Nobody ever got any good by merely read- 
ing the Bible. Nobody ever got any good by 
just hearing a sermon. 

Get a music-book and look at it. Music- 
hook — there is no music in a book! Call it 
what you will — Hallelujah Chorus, Te Deum — 
that does not turn it into music. It is only 
black dots on a piece of paper — that and noth- 
ing more. The organist and choir must take 
hold of it and turn it into music. 

Open the Bible and look at it. What shall 
we call it? The Word of God? The Book of 
Life? No — it is nothing but black spots on a 
piece of paper — that and nothing more. 

Think of the choir standing up and looking 
at the notes, but never opening their mouths! 
Think of us looking at the words of the Bible, 
or listening to them, and never turning the 
words into life! 

We have laughed when missionaries have 
told us of ignorant savages who swallowed the 
doctor’s prescription, thinking the writing was 
going to cure them. Have we not many among 
ourselves who in religion are apt to do just the 
same thing? They swallow the words of a 
text, and look for a cure. 


A PARABLE 


115 


Mr. Moffatt, the famous missionary, tells us 
that he was once engaged in building a shed 
near his house, when he found himself needing 
some carpenter’s tool that he had left behind. 
Taking up a chip he penciled on it a note to 
his wife, asking her to send it by the Kaffir boy. 

“But,” said the boy holding the chip, “that 
cannot speak.” 

“All right,” said Mr. Moffatt, “take it, and 
you will see.” 

The Kaffir held the chip with awe, and 
hastened with it to the house. Mrs. Moffatt 
read it, and at once gave him the tool her 
husband wanted — then flung the chip on the 
ground. The boy picked it up, almost 
frightened. He made a hole in it and attached 
a string and wore it round his neck, telling 
everybody — ''That thing can talk.^^ 

The only good of the chip lay in the fulfill- 
ment of the message that was written on it. 
The only good of the Bible is when its messages 
are fulfilled by us and in us. 

The sternest condemnation that can meet us 
is when knowing stops short of doing — when 
seeing stops short of being. 

“To know and not to do, ’twere better not to know. 

To see and not to be, ’twere better not to see.” 

A man can feed himself as well by looking 


116 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


into an ironmonger’s shop as into a con- 
fectioner’s shop, if he only looks in at the 
window. He must go and get something which 
he turns into life. 

A fool is he, verily, who thinks he can get a 
dinner by looking into a cookery-book. 

Take heed how ye hear! Take heed how ye 
read! 


XII 

A METHODIST CHILD OF THE DEVIL 
An Imaginary Interview 

T HAVE brought you a manuscript for your 

I paper, sir,’’ I said, entering the sanctum 
of the editor with such modesty as be- 
came the occasion. He turned in his chair, and 
asked in his busiest tone, “What is it about?” 

“A Methodist Child of the Devil,” I replied, 
as I held out the paper. 

“What!” said he, “do I catch the words 
rightly? Here, let tne see.” 

He frowned as he looked at the heading. 
“Outrageous! Almost blasphemous, I might 
say. ‘A Methodist Child of the Devil,’ indeed!” 
And he looked at me with a sort of annihilating 
indignation. 

“The thing is absurd — unthinkable,” he 
went on angrily. “Do you really suppose that 
I would publish such an insult in a paper like 
mine?” 

He rose, handed back the manuscript, and 
opened the door. But I lingered. 

“Allow me to explain, sir. The title is not 
original.” 


117 


118 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


“That,” said he, “is neither an explanation 
nor an apology.” 

“But if I tell you where I got the title you 
may be willing, at least, to look at the article.” 

“Got the title said he. “Got the title, 
indeed! Probably from some scoffer who can 
find nothing better to do than to invent such 
a scurrilous phrase.” 

“Sir,” I said, “it is from John Wesley.” 

“You add to your impudence,” cried the 
editor. “John Wesley would never have been 
guilty of using such a phrase.” 

Then I held out an extract from one of John 
Wesley’s Sermons: “Some of you Methodists 
are twice as rich as you were before you were 
Methodists: some of you are fourfold as rich; 
some of you are tenfold as rich. How, if, 
whilst you get all you can, and save all you 
can, you do not give all you can, then are you 
tenfold more the children of hell than you were 
before you were Methodists.” 

The editor put on his glasses and read the 
words again, humming and ha-ing. Then he 
turned to me and said, “You may leave the 
paper.” 

The Dream 

He was sitting in his library, a spacious 
place on which he prided himself, with a goodly 
array of books, ancient and modern. It was a 


A CHILD OF THE DEVIL 


119 


close day, with thunder in the air, and he 
lounged in the easy chair by the open window, 
looking out over the garden, a pleasant stretch 
bordered with flowers. An archway covered 
with roses stood at each end of the pathway, 
and in the center the tennis-lawn, that had 
been refreshed with recent showers, was all a 
vivid green. The sound of the mowing machine 
which the gardener drew across it was scarcely 
a disturbance — rather was a soothing mo- 
notony. 

He was in that pleasant frame of mind which 
comes from doing a good deed, for he had sent 
a check to some charity, and before him lay 
the letter of the secretary, with abounding 
thanks. 

As he smoked his cigar he stretched out his 
hand for some volume within reach. It was 
Wesley’s Sermons, and he was dipping here and 
there, somewhat lazily, when suddenly he was 
arrested by a text that startled him — “They 
that will be rich, fall into temptation and a 
snare, and into many foolish and hateful lusts 
such as drown men in destruction and perdi- 
tion.” 

It struck him as a terrible saying. He turned 
to the Revised Version, hoping, perhaps, to 
find it softened. He found it more severe — 
“They that desire to be rich.” 


120 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


He sighed within himself. Alas, who of us 
does not desire to be rich — ^parson or people? 
Who of us does not dream of the splendid things 
he would do — if only he had plenty of money? 
He dared not conceal from himself that he was 
certainly one of them. He looked back over 
the years, and had to confess to himself the 
fact that all his life, all his efforts and en- 
deavors had been shaped by this one thing — 
the desire to be rich. 

He turned to the sermon again. ‘T never 
heard of anyone else preaching from this text,” 
so Wesley begins. “Nor have I either,” he 
said to himself, “before or since.” Indeed, 
the text was almost new to him — one of those 
overlooked passages which show how blind we 
are when we do not want to see. He under- 
lined the words in his Bible as a sort of 
apology. 

He turned over the pages of the Sermons, 
and presently his eye fell on a passage that 
again arrested him. “Christianity has in it 
the elements of its own destruction.” He read 
it again; and yet again more slowly and care- 
fully. 

“Surely, surely not,” he said to himself. 
“Is not Christianity invincible, utterly beyond 
the powers of destruction, against which the 
gates of hell can never prevail? And yet its 


A CHILD OF THE DEVIL 


121 


destruction lies within itself and not without? 
What is it?” 

He hfted his face and looked out over the 
garden, where an apple tree was bursting into 
a glory of pink and white. The illustration at 
once occurred to him how that some creature 
may alight and leave its egg on the bud. And, 
as the blossom develops and forms into an 
apple, at its core lies the grub ready to eat its 
way out and turn the fruit to rottenness. Can 
there be such a germ in Christianity? What is it? 

Eagerly he read on: “When a man becomes 
a true Christian he becomes industrious, trust- 
worth3% and prosperous. Now, if that man, 
whilst he gets all he can, and saves all he can, 
does not give all he can, I have more hope of 
Judas Iscariot than of that man.” 

Again he was stayed and shocked. Judas 
Iscariot, the black traitor, he who shames 
humanity by his deed of darkest infamy, 
preferred to the Methodist who does not give 
all he can! And yet Wesley was not given to 
violent and thoughtless rhetoric. Could it be 
true, or even near the truth? 

The air grew more oppressive, sultry, heavier, 
and though deeply impressed as he was by the 
words he was reading, he sank back in the 
chair to meditate, and like the apostle who 
went up on the house-top to pray, he fell 


122 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


asleep. And like the apostle he dreamed a 
dream and saw a vision. 

Opposite him on the couch was a figure he 
knew well, just as if it had come out of the 
Hymn book of early days — the picture which 
he had so often looked at by way of relief from 
a dull sermon. There were the familiar face, 
the neatly curled wig, the gown, the white 
hands, the silk stockings, the shoes with silver 
buckles. It was John Wesley himself. 

‘T see, my brother,” he began, “yo^ ^re 
reading some of my Sermons, What were your 
thoughts as you read them, may I ask?” 

“Well, I confess I was amazed to find you 
using such language as you do, sir. You will 
pardon me, I trust, but it is dreadful to think 
that you have more hope of Judas Iscariot 
than of many Methodists. You have said 
some terrible things, sir.” 

“Ah, so did my Lord and Master, my 
brother; more terrible from his lips than from 
any other. Did he not pronounce a terrible 
doom upon him who layeth up treasure for 
himself and is not rich toward God? Did he 
not say it is easier for a camel to go through 
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to 
enter into the kingdom of God?” 

“Well,” he said, hoping to find a sufficient 


A CHILD OF THE DEVIL 


12S 


excuse for himself, ‘T have always given a 
tenth of my income.” 

“Alas, my brother,” said he, “that you 
should seek such consolation. You have no 
more to do with tithes than with mint or 
cummin. Allow me to inquire, when you gave 
your tenth, what was your income.^” 

“One hundred pounds a year.” 

“And that left you ninety pounds a year to 
live on. And you did it?” 

“Yes, of course, I had to deny myself of 
some things.” 

“Deny yourself! Then was your giving 
worth something. You became prosperous?” 

“Well, moderately so. I worked hard and 
had five hundred pounds a year.” 

“And that left you four hundred and fifty 
pounds a year to live on?” 

“Yes,” he said, reluctantly. Really, this 
kind of searching inquiry was uncomfortable. 
And yet, here was one whose authority he was 
bound to acknowledge, the founder of the 
people to whom he belonged. 

“Ah,” he sighed; “you who had managed to 
live on ninety pounds a year spent on yourself 
four hundred and fifty. And to-day, you have 
how much?” 

“Well, all told, perhaps, a thousand or 
twelve hundred.” 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


lU 

“And that leaves you nine hundred a year 
to spend on yourself. There is now no self- 
denial in your giving. It is but the superfluity 
of your wealth. Can you dare to call that 
being rich toward God? He looks not at how 
much you give, but how much you keep — at 
the much that is left.’’ 

He sighed and lifted up his hands. 

“And this is what Methodism is come to! 
My words of solemn entreaty and warning 
not only unheeded, but forgotten, unheard. 
So is my work in the Lord undone. It has 
found in itself the elements of its own destruc- 
tion.” 

“But I have to provide for the children,” he 
pleaded. 

“The children,” he repeated. Then his eyes 
wandered round the room — at the pictures on 
the wall, at the furniture which had been 
carefully gathered, heeding not so much the 
cost as the elegance. Then he looked out over 
the garden and the lawn. At last his eyes 
rested on the box of cigars. 

“My brother, you have at least provided 
well for yourself,” he said. “And as for the 
children — will you hand me the volume of 
sermons? I suppose my words are still of some 
authority among the Methodist people whom 
I have loved as my own?” 


A CHILD OF THE DEVIL 


125 


“Undoubtedly,” he said. Then he stayed, 
as if to correct himself. Had the words any 
authority for him.?^ “Well, at any rate, in 
some things,” he added. 

“In some things! In some things! Better 
you should reject them all than select those 
which suit your own choice and convenience!” 
Again he sighed. 

Then he asked him to read the passage on 
which his finger rested. “Why should you 
throw away money upon your children any 
more than upon yourself, in delicate food, in 
gay or costly apparel, in superfluities of any 
kind? Why should you provide for them more 
pride, or lust, more vanity, more foolish or 
hurtful desires? Do not offer your sons or 
your daughters unto Belial any more than unto 
Molech. 

“How amazing is the infatuation of those 
parents who think they can never leave their 
children enough! What! Cannot you leave 
them enough of arrows, firebrands — not 
enough of pride, lust, ambition, vanity? Surely 
thou and they, when ye are lifting up your 
eyes in hell, will have enough both of the worm 
that never dieth, and of the fire that never 
shall be quenched.” 

He closed the book in silence and put it 
down. What could he say? 


126 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


It was this terrible visitor who broke a long 
silence. 

“Do you not hear that the hospitals are 
threatened with being closed.^ You, if you are 
sick, can have ease, luxury, skillful attendance 
and ministry. And the Lord said it is he who 
suffereth in these sick ones. It is he who must 
go unattended and uncared for. Think you it 
will be nothing to face him when he cometh 
to judge the world — ‘Inasmuch as ye did it 
not to one of the least of these my little ones, 
ye did it not to me. Depart from me.’ Wouldst 
thou hear from those lips the terrible words 
that thou dost resent from mine — ‘A Methodist 
Child of the BeviVr 

While he slept and dreamed, the thunder 
clouds had filled all the heavens. He was 
suddenly roused from his sleep by a flash of 
lightning that seemed to blaze everywhere. 
An awful crash of thunder rolled overhead, 
and went rumbling and echoing in the hollow 
of the hills. It seemed to take up and repeat 
the words with which the interview had closed 
— A Methodist Child of the Devil, 


XIII 

THE STORY OF THE SEED 


I T was in the early springtime that a 
certain man went forth to get him 
a packet of flower seeds. They were 
wrapped in a paper gay with pictured flowers, 
vivid scarlet and green leaved, and tied with a 
silken string. On the paper was a label, and 
thereon the name of the seed in stately Latin, 
not quite correct but solemn, Lilium Ecclesi- 
asticum Methodisticum. He took them home 
with him, and set them delicately in a cup- 
board on which were designs elegantly carved 
— angels hovered, and saints with haloes walked 
as in a Garden of Eden. 

Then the seeds talked together. 

“We ought to be very thankful to enjoy 
such sacred privileges. So fine and costly a 
cupboard for our resting-place, rich in its 
dainty symbolism. And a name proclaiming 
our orthodoxy in Latin so learned and dis- 
tinguished.” 

Hear what happened. The mildew came 
upon them and they rotted. 

But another packet of seed was there that 

\n 


US 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


cried — “What care we for gay wrappers and 
silken string! 

“What to us is your costly cupboard and 
orthodox label! 

“Fling us forth into the earth, out there 
where bleak winds blow, and rains beat. Bury 
us that we may live.” 

And later stood the flower to bless the world 
with beauty and fragrance and gladness. 

The seed that kept itself to itself rotted. 

The seed that gave itself away found itself in 
a flower. 


XIV 


HOW JOHN PERMEWAN SAID THE 
LORD’S PRAYER 

TOP!” roared John Permewan, the leader 
of the choir, flinging up his hands 
and stamping angrily. “Stop! Dick 
Thomas’s big fiddle is too loud. You do want 
it put in so gentle as can be. Now lev us gone 
for to take it again.” 

Dick Thomas grunted something, and then 
boomed and twanged away more loudly than 
ever. Again the leader flung up his hands, and, 
white with rage, turned fiercely upon the 
offender. 

“What do you mean, Dick Thomas — going 
on like that? I am the leader of this here 
choir, I believe!” 

“More’s the pity,” grunted Dick Thomas, 
impudently. 

“Well, if you don’t do what I tell ’ee you 
can go,” cried the leader. 

“Certainly,” responded the player of the big 
fiddle, getting up. “And the sooner the better, 
I’m thinking. You won’t get nobody else.” 

And Dick Thomas, making as much noise as 
129 


130 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


he could, shouldered the offending instrument 
and went away. 

So the quarrel began. 

John Permewan was the blacksmith of the 
parish of Saint Gwen’s — a big, brawny man as 
ever flung a sledge-hammer. Foremost in the 
parish was he in many respects, whether it was 
making a horseshoe, or at a wrestling bout on 
the village green, or holding his own in a 
Radical speech against squire and parson. 

But it was as musician that John Permewan 
took himself most seriously. Church or chapel 
was nothing to him. So long as music was 
wanted he was there to play, or to sing, and to 
train the choir with patient care and real skill. 
First of the bellringers, he it was who gave the 
bells of Saint Gwen’s the chimes that went 
sounding across the creek to the neighboring 
parish of Little Petherton when the wind was 
in the west. When it was elsewhere the music 
drifted over the moors to Saint Minion’s, 
provoking at once the admiration and jealousy 
of its parishioners. 

Bell-ringing, like the fiery work of the smithy, 
was exhausting, and often led to a call at 
“The Cornish Choughs,” and here none excelled 
John Permewan in his capacity for beer; not 
that he ever took too much, but it was enough 
to make the ground of a complaint against 


THE LORD’S PRAYER 


131 


him by the teetotal Methodists, for, like most 
of the parish in those simple times, John 
Permewan belonged to both places of worship, 
and led in the morning the church choir, and 
at night the chapel choir, and did both well, 
as he did all else. 

Nor were these the only gifts that the black- 
smith had. The little thatched cottage in which 
he dwelt was proof of his skill as gardener, gay 
with its flowers and heavy with its fruit. But 
of these he was always ready to give seed or 
graft to any neighbor, so that here the admira- 
tion was untouched by envy. 

It was within this httle thatched cottage, 
with its clustering roses, that there dwelt the 
sweetest possession which John Permewan 
called his own, his pride and joy. In the 
bower of the doorway, or amidst the geraniums 
that crowded the window, one caught sight of 
the sweet face of his daughter, Morwenna. Or, 
if the passer-by failed to see her, he might yet 
hear her voice ringing from garden or inner 
chamber, as blithe and rapturous as the lark 
that went soaring into those blue skies, and as 
flutelike as the blackbird when it perched on 
the bough and, saucy rascal as he was, sought 
to pay for the supper of cherries which he had 
stolen by the richness of his song. 

Little did John Permewan dream as he went 


1S2 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


on his busy way that from Morwenna was to 
come what should be the upsetting of his 
authority and the bitterness of his cup. How 
could any harm come from her indeed — she 
who was as good as she was fair, who was 
ready to sit through the night with a sick 
neighbor, or to read a chapter from the blessed 
Book, and kneel and offer a simple prayer that 
seemed to open the door of heaven for the 
sufferer and the dying.^ To the blacksmith it 
was more than any service or sermon as he sat 
and looked at his Morwenna, and saw in her 
again the bride that he had loved so well, and 
whose death had brought the one great sorrow 
of his life. 

Dick Thomas, he of the big fiddle, had gone 
home across the creek shouldering his burden, 
and now he sat by the fire smoking his pipe 
and grunting his satisfaction. 

“I’ve a-had my revenge, anyhow, and that 
is something,” he muttered to himself, and 
then went plotting further ill with malicious 
ingenuity. Of old we read that at certain times 
the angel of healing stirred the pool into 
beneficence and blessing. So is there a bad 
angel which, upon occasion, can stir the evil 
and poisonous sediment that is in most souls 
if you get down far enough. Even where 
waters are sweet and pure, and lilies grow, and 


THE LORD’S PRAYER 


133 


wild birds find their sheltered nest, there is 
mud beneath if you disturb it. And thus it 
was with Dick Thomas. 

He was the village carpenter of Little Pether- 
ton. Although it was a tramp of two miles 
when the tide was low, and three miles when 
the tide sent him round at the head of the 
creek, yet he worshiped at Saint Gwen’s. And 
his big fiddle held a position worthy of its 
size in all the musical doings of which John 
Per me wan was the head. And there was none 
upon whom the blacksmith could count with 
more assurance; none more ready to heed any 
word or wish of the choirmaster. Whoever was 
out of tune, the big fiddle never failed in 
concert pitch, or erred by a hair’s breadth from 
the beat of the master’s hand. 

It was an amazement and a mystery to John 
Permewan. Whatever had come across the big 
fiddle that so suddenly, without hint or whisper 
of disaffection, it should have struck into such 
open revolt? 

But if John Permewan could not guess there 
was one who knew, and her crimson face and 
trembling voice would have betrayed the secret 
had her father been quick enough to read it. 
Morwenna it was who had drawn the steps of 
the carpenter across the parish bounds — a line 
of demarcation observed far more rigidly in 


134 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


those days than it is in ours. It was love to 
her that had kept the big fiddle in tune, and 
made it so swiftly obedient to the commands 
of the blacksmith. 

Dick Thomas had shown in many ways his 
devotion to Morwenna, without any encourage- 
ment, but never had he put the matter to any 
definite issue till that evening. As he came 
round the bend of the creek on his way to the 
choir practice he overtook the girl returning 
from a cottage, with the basket on her arm in 
which she had taken some dainty to the sick 
old body there. She had greeted him with a 
pleasant “Good evening,” and they walked for 
some time in silence; then suddenly the great 
tide of his love crept over him and broke like 
the seas that surge about the rocks. 

“Morwenna, my dear, I do want to speak 
to ’ee.” 

The girl stopped as Dick Thomas set down 
his big fiddle and laid it by a gate. 

It was a day in November. The sun was 
setting behind the wooded heights beyond the 
creek. The rooks came clanging homeward, 
darkening the sky. 

The girl turned her head nervously from him 
as he laid his hand upon her arm. 

“Morwenna, I do love ’ee — love ’ee better 
than my life.” 


THE LORD’S PRAYER 


135 


‘T am sorry,” she sighed; ‘Very sorry.” 

‘T will make ’ee comfortable, Morwenna, 
my dear,” he pleaded, “and take care of ’ee.” 

“I cannot leave my father,” she said. “And 
if I could ” And then she paused. 

“I will wait for ’ee, my dear.” 

Then she turned and looked him full in the 
face. 

“It is no use, Dick; I am sorry.” 

And she left him and hastened on her way. 

Dick lingered by the gate. Then all his love 
turned to fierceness — a fire that raged within 
him. 

“She’ll be sorrier soon,” he muttered angrily. 

So had come the revolt. 

The disaffection spread like a pestilence, for 
Dick Thomas suddenly became the champion 
of Little Petherton. None knew or suspected 
the cause of the change that came over him. 
It was enough for them that he had fallen out 
with John Permewan, and the parishes took up 
the quarrel, as became the spirit of the times. 

“We are so good as they stuck-up folks into 
Saint Gwen’s any day, and better too,” said 
every man and woman as they talked of the 
quarrel, “and ’tis time for to lev John Permewan 
know it.” 

So, with Dick Thomas at their head, they 


136 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


set up their own choir, and even sent the music 
of their rival chimes across the creek. Every 
man, woman, and child in the respective 
parishes seemed to have ranged themselves 
about their leader. No man of Little Petherton 
would send his horse to be shod at the smithy 
of Saint Gwen’s, handy as it was, and for no 
bit of carpentering was Dick Thomas fetched 
to Saint Gwen’s, however pressing the need, or 
however awkward it might be to do without it. 

Saint Gwen would scarcely speak to Little 
Petherton, and Little Petherton went out of 
its way to avoid Saint Gwen. 

In John Permewan the dispute wrought a 
bitterness that showed itself in the many 
matters with which he had to do. In the 
smithy, where he had whistled a song at his 
work, he now snapped angrily. The choir and 
chimes alike lost their charm for him, and even 
Morwenna found it hard to please her father. 
The visits to “The Cornish Choughs” grew 
more frequent and prolonged, and Morw^enna 
sat night after night in waiting for him, until 
the hour for closing compelled his return. And 
not even there was he a welcome guest. As 
thunder turns the milk sour, the storm had 
changed his humor to sarcasm. Morose and 
rude when spoken to, he sat in angry silence, 
and when any interrupted it he spoke with a 


THE LORD’S PRAYER 


137 


fierceness which frightened his neighbors. The 
wretchedness spread through the parish. Even 
when the choir sang, or the chimes sounded, 
everybody felt that the music had gone from 
them both — there was an undertone of defiance 
in it all which destroyed the harmony. 

The more John Permewan suffered the more 
did Dick Thomas and the parish of Little 
Petherton exult. It would teach Saint Gwen’s 
not to look down on Little Petherton, anyhow, 
and it was time they knew it too — so said 
every man and woman in the place. 

To Morwenna, the innocent cause of it all, 
it was a chastening which brought a sadness 
indeed, a deep sorrow which made her only 
more tender-hearted, more sweet than ever in 
both looks and ways. Even in his bitterness 
her father could not but feel how her presence 
made the home bright and beautiful. The 
more he left it the more she set herself to make 
it attractive. His every want was anticipated, 
and she showed in everything how she longed 
to make up to him for all that was lost. 

None took it to heart except Morwenna, and 
in her simple prayers she pleaded that there 
might come a happier time for them all. The 
prayer was answered sooner than she had 
hoped, and in a manner more complete than 
she could have dreamed. 


138 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


It was in the later spring, although the 
winter still lingered with keen frost and not 
infrequent falls of snow. A series of special 
services were being held in the little Methodist 
church, which had stirred a great interest, and 
many had been led into the way of a new 
life. 

One evening Morwenna sat with her father 
at supper; a wild night indeed, the wind 
howling in the chimney, rattling at the window, 
hissing and raging in the leafless branches of 
the trees, whilst every now and then a sharp 
shower of hail beat upon the glass. 

’Tis a terrible night,” said John Permewan. 
“You aren’t going out, are ’ee, my dear?” 

Morwenna sat by the fire, pouring out the 
tea, and, as John Permewan turned to look at 
her, he started, for the image of the bride that 
he had wooed and won long years ago was 
perfectly reproduced in her. He got up and 
laid his hand tenderly on her shoulder, and, as 
if conscious of having spoken too sharply to 
her in these troubled times, he kissed her on 
the forehead. 

“I must go, father. I have to play and 
sing.” 

“I don’t like ’ee to go by yourself, my dear; 
I think I will go along, too.” 

Morwenna laid her hand tenderly on his and 


THE LORD’S PRAYER 


139 


said nothing, but her look was all gladness and 
gratitude. 

They returned from the service and sat by 
the fire. It was evident that John Permewan 
had been deeply impressed. He sat without a 
word for some time, the old clock ticking 
solemnly in the corner, and the storm raging 
more furiously about the house. Presently he 
looked up and said, as the tears gathered in 
his eyes — 

‘‘Morwenna, my dear, you must pray for 
me.” 

“Father, let us pray together,” she said, and 
they knelt at the table. 

“What shall I say?” he asked, with a choke 
in his voice. 

“I think there is nothing better than the 
Lord’s Prayer, father,” said Morwenna. 

Slowly they went through its simple and 
sublime petitions; his was the voice that 
trembled; hers was firm and strong, as of one 
who had found in God a refuge and strength. 

^*Our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed he 
thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will he done 
on earth, as it is done in heaven. Give us this 
day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses, 
as we forgive them ” 

There came a. dead pause. Presently the 


140 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


silence was broken as John Permewan rose 
from his knees and sat in the chair. 

‘T can’t say that,” he whispered. ’Tis no 
good, I can’t say it.” 

Morwenna waited for a while, then kissed 
her father tenderly and went her way to bed. 
He sat on until the clock struck eleven; then 
his daughter heard the front door opened and 
shut again. Her father had gone out, that was 
certain, but why or whither she could not 
guess. 

Wrapping his thick coat around him, and 
facing the fury of the storm, he made his way 
down the hill and roimd the head of the creek 
into Little Petherton. Then he stood at the 
door of Dick Thomas and knocked loudly; 
knocked again, and yet again. Presently the 
window of an upper room was opened, and the 
carpenter thrust out his head. 

“Who is it?” he asked. “And what do ’ee 
want out there this time o’ night?” 

“ ’Tis me, John Permewan, and I want to 
speak to ’ee.” 

“You!” said Dick Thomas, angrily. “What 
do you want ’long with me?” 

“I want to say that I’m sorry, Dick Thomas. 
If you’ve done me any wrong I forgive ’ee, and 
if I’ve done you any wrong I want you to 
forgive me.” 


THE LORD’S PRAYER 


141 


John Permewan, as he spoke, stepped on the 
sill of the window below and reached up his 
hand. 

“Will ’ee please for to shake hands ’long 
with me.^^” 

The appeal went at once to the heart of Dick 
Thomas and woke up all that was best in 
him. 

“ ’Tis for me to ask your forgiveness, John 
Permewan,” he said, in another voice. “Mine 
has been the fault and the wrong, not yours.” 

“Well, there’s an end to it all, anyhow, and 
God bless ’ee,” and again their hands were 
clasped. Then John Permewan hurried back 
to Saint Gwen’s. 

The storm had ceased as suddenly as it had 
come, and the moon shone high in the clear 
sky. He felt as if he had stepped out into a 
new heaven and a new earth, where all was 
peace; never had the way seemed so short. 

Taking off his overcoat as he entered his 
cottage, he stood at the bottom of the stairs 
and called his daughter. 

“Asleep, are ’ee, my dear?” 

“No, father,” said Morwenna. “Do you 
want me?” 

“Put something round you for a minute and 
come down, will ’ee? I’ve got something to 
tell ’ee.” 


142 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


Wondering what had happened, she hastened 
to her father. 

“My dear,” said he, with a tone of triumph 
in his voice, “I can say the Lord’s Prayer 
now.” 

They knelt together, and this time his voice 
was firm and strong as hers. 

Forgive us our trespasses ^ as we forgive them 
that trespass against us.*^ 

From henceforth, John Permewan was a new 
man. The next night he and Morwenna went 
to the service. A new light shone in his eyes, 
a new tone rang in his voice, as, standing by 
his daughter’s side, he joined with her in the 
singing. 

It was later in the service that evening that, 
amongst those who rose to testify their pur- 
pose of surrender to God, Dick Thomas stood 
for a moment, then knelt in earnest prayer. 

Of the changed lives which resulted from 
those services the most transformed was that 
of Dick Thomas. New gifts as well as new 
grace had come to him. Before the year was 
done he had become a local preacher, and his 
services attracted large congregations, and 
were rich in the best results. He was a frequent 
visitor at John Permewan’s, with whom he be- 
came more than a friend — a brother beloved. 

It was as he came home from the service 


THE LORD’S PRAYER 


143 


one evening with Morwenna that Dick Thomas 
referred to old times. 

“Do you mind, Morwenna, what I told you 
by the gate that evening?” 

“Of course I do,” said Morwenna. “Why?” 
And her sweet face flushed as she spoke. 

“I would say it again if it would not make 
you sorry.” 

“I don’t think it would,” whispered Mor- 
wenna. 

Dick Thomas said it again, and they were 
wed. 

All of Saint Gwen’s and Little Petherton 
came to the wedding, for each claimed Mor- 
wenna as their own, and they were friends 
once more. 


XV 

THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD 


I CAN think it was a day in March, a bitter 
day of bleak east wind. Under an old 
tree twisted by the storms crouched the 
poor lad, ill clad, shivering with cold and 
perishing with hunger. 

And about him a set of grunting hogs. The 
veriest cur that ever crept would have whined 
its way to his side and maybe have licked the 
wasted hand in sympathy. But these pigs — 
what cared they? He might lie there until the 
wind whistled through his hollow ribs — what 
was that to them? Give them their husks and 
they would grunt their satisfaction still. 

Now come visions to the crouching lad. He 
sees the old home: the father with his sunny 
face, a perpetual benediction. There were the 
well fed and happy servants who greeted their 
master with a cheery welcome. 

Then he flings himself up fiercely. “If I am 
going to be anybody’s hired servant I will be 
his. I will arise and go to my father.” 

The new purpose puts new life into him. 
Slapping his sides to get some warmth he 
hurries away down over the hill, and presently 
144 


GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD 145 


is passing the door of the citizen who had 
sent him into the field to feed the swine, and 
bidding him share their husks for his food. 

Forth comes the citizen, his face hard, stern, 
pitiless. 

“Here, stop,” he cries, “where are you going?” 

“Going home,” says the lad. 

Then with a snarl — “Fow going home! 
You’ve got no home to go to. You have had 
your portion of goods and spent every penny 
of it in riotous living. There is nothing left 
for you at home. Go back and mind the swine 
— it is the only job you are likely to get, and 
it is the only thing you are fit for.” 

Poor lad! Alas, it was true. He had taken 
the portion of goods and squandered it all. 
There was nothing left. 

Then a new thought fills him. A new light 
flashes from his face, and once again he lifts 
himself, hopeful and strong. “There is one 
thing left,” says he. 

“There is nothing left, I tell you,” cries the 
citizen. “Your character gone — disgraced, out- 
cast, disowned, there is nothing left for you.” 

“Yes,” persisted the lad, “there is one thing.” 

“What is that?” 

father hves me/* And he turned and 
hurried on his way. 

There is ever the starting point. My Father 


146 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


laves me. All else may be spent, but there is 
one thing we can never, never spend — My 
Father loves me. 

I have left the English shores, and seen the 
cliffs sink below the horizon, gone on and on 
for hundreds of miles, until new stars shone 
over me. But ever and ever I was hemmed in 
by the heavens. Heaven ringed me round 
about. I could never get outside that. As 
the heaven doth compass the earth so are we 
compassed about with that infinite love. There 
is our strength: our unfailing hope lies in that 
unfailing love. There is the starting point for 
all — ^for him who has gone lowest down and 
spent all, it abides forever — My Father loves me. 

God loves the worst man living as much as 
he loves the best of us, every bit. 

What, then, is the good of being good.f^ 

Is not that what the elder brother said, and 
says still? ‘Tf my father is going to love that 
miserable scamp who has spent all in riotous 
living, what is the good of my staying at home 
and doing everything he tells me?*’ 

But how true it was! When some fierce 
storm swept about the old home, with howling 
winds and crash of thunder, the father stirred 
and woke. His first thought was not for the 
elder son, who lay safely in his bed. His first 
thought was, “I wonder where my poor boy is 


GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD 147 

on such a night as this. What shelter has he 
gotr 

While we were yet sinners he loved us. Is it 
not true.^ It was for the lost sheep that the 
good shepherd left the ninety and nine and 
went forth seeking, seeking unwearied, hither, 
thither, until he found it. It was the lost 
sheep that he laid on his shoulder; the torn, 
lame, silly sheep that had gone astray, and 
brought it home with rejoicing. 

The Son of God has come into this world to 
seek not the righteous, but to seek and to save 
the lost. 

No man can get outside and beyond that love. 

No words but those of the Lord Jesus him- 
self can fitly tell us of that welcome that 
waited for him. They are too great, too 
wonderful to come from any lips but his. The 
world has never heard from any other anything 
like it. 

Have we not heard that love is blind Nay, 
verily. No farther vision is there, no quicker, 
keener sight than love. Love wears no spec- 
tacles. Love needs no telescope. His father 
saw him. He saw not the rags, or if he saw 
them it was only to rejoice to think of the 
best robes that waited for him. His love dwelt 
not upon the disgrace, the wasted substance. 


148 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


This my son — that was all the father saw — 
that was all the father thought of — that was 
all the father cared for. 

Note one thing well. The prodigal on his 
way home said, ‘T will ask him to make me 
one of his hired servants.” But he never said 
it — could not say it. That welcome choked 
those words. He said, “Father, I have sinned.” 
And could get no further. 

And let us learn this lesson, taking careful 
heed of it. It is perilous to preach repentance 
apart from the Father’s love. Suicide is often, 
very often, the black despair of one haunted 
ever by the misery of a wasted life. Finding no 
goodness anywhere, in anything, he becomes 
his own stern judge and executioner. 

There is but one place of repentance. When 
those arms of love compassed him, when the 
warm breath of that welcome greeted him, 
when that great heart of love poured itself 
forth in that kiss of welcome, then the prodigal 
could say it as he could say it nowhere else, 
“Father, I have sinned.” 

The goodness of God leadeth us to repentance. 

Note further in the story the father’s joy. 
The son is sunk in shame and bitter grief. The 
elder son is dumb with scorn. It is the father 
whose voice in fullest gladness cries, “Bring 


GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD 149 


forth the best robes.” It is the father who 
appeals to the elder brother. ‘Tt is meet that 
we should make merry and be glad.” 

Surely this completes the story. There is 
joy not only among the angels over one sinner 
that repenteth. The fullest, deepest, richest 
joy is in the heart of our Father God. 

Long years ago I was standing in a post 
office when an old body came in, much excited 
and clearly embarrassed, holding a letter in her 
hand. 

I turned to her and said, ‘‘Can I help you?” 

The tears were in her eyes, and her voice 
choked with emotion as she put a letter in my 
hand and said: “ ’Tis from my boy, sir. We 
haven’t heard of him for years. He is just 
landed in Liverpool, and I want to send him a 
telegram.” 

“Let me do it for you,” I said. I copied 
the name and address on the telegram form, 
and then turned to her. “What shall I say?” 

It was with difficulty she managed to utter 
the words. “Tell him to come home, sir. Tell 
him to come home.” 

There is the message of the loving Father to 
the world. 

^^Tell him to come home — Tell him to come 
homieJ^ 


XVI 


WHAT A SEA TROUT DID 

I T was a good many years ago — more than 
I care to count — when I had gone for a 
holiday to Scotland. I stayed at a hotel 
on the shore of one of the principal lochs, and 
every day went fishing with Jimmy, the gillie, 
who soon became to me a comrade and a chum. 

He had suggested a visit to a remote moun- 
tain loch where the proprietor of the hotel had 
a boat, but to which few ever ventured because 
of the diflSculties of reaching it. We had an 
early breakfast and started for a row of four- 
teen miles along the loch. Leaving the boat 
we took our lunch in our creels, and with rod 
and landing-net we climbed the steep moun- 
tain-side, a couple of miles of heather without 
a path, where the grouse rose in coveys with 
their protest — Go-beck-go-beck — and the plovers 
rang out their wail against the intrusion, and 
occasionally a startled sheep bleated in call for 
the flock from which it had wandered. And 
then we reached the shore of the little loch. 

It was a day of fierce heat, and the little 
loch lay before us without a ripple on its sur- 
face, or the circling break of a rising fish. It 
150 


WHAT A SEA TROUT DID 151 


was a mirror that reflected perfectly the sur- 
rounding hills, broken only when a wild duck 
rose from the edge and bade its young ones lie 
close about the stones from which they could 
scarcely be distinguished. Fishing was utterly 
hopeless, so we lit our pipes and sat in the 
heather, as Jamie told me about the birds, for 
in the later autumn and early spring he acted 
as gamekeeper. 

“The black-back gull, sir, is a wicked bird,” 
said he. “He is cruel, cruel — killing not for 
meat only, but from just a love of killing. 
Eleven of my young pheasants I found dead, 
and I watched and shot the murderous beast. 
It was a black-back gull. And they will eat 
the grouse eggs. I have found scores of the 
empty shells. A wicked bird, sir.” 

A couple of cormorants flew over the water. 

“They take their toll too, sir,” said he, “for 
they eat ten pounds of fish a day, and that 
mounts up in the year. But they are welcome 
in a place like this, where the water is over- 
stocked, and the fish haven’t a chance of 
getting to any size.” 

He told of a scene he had watched of the 
black cock when the mating season had begun. 

“It was a grand sight when one of the cocks 
came strutting and sent out his challenge like 
a prize-fighter, and another stepped into the 


15 ^ 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


ring — for a ring it was, with all the hen birds 
watching, ready to go off with the conqueror.” 

And another strange story he told me of 
how a forest of young trees were being killed, 
dying off one after the other. 

“We wondered what it was — for it was only 
just in that one plantation, that had the same 
chance of doing well as any of the others. And 
what do you think it was, sir.?^ Mice— field 
micey that ringed the bark clear round. So 
we got all the young owls we could, and the 
young kestrels, and put them in the plantation, 
and it was not long before not one of the mice 
could be found. The mice would have gone 
on clearing the place of the young trees.” 

Then suddenly from within the distant hills 
came the rumble of thunder. Swiftly rose 
huge masses of yellow-white clouds, blotting 
out the blue and the sunshine. Presently 
there came a rattling shower of hail. The 
change was magical. There had been a long 
drought, and now as the hailstones fell on the 
loch the trout were leaping everywhere, snap- 
ping at them, madly. We pushed off the boat, 
and began to cast oiu* flies. If we had had a 
dozen flies, instead of three, we should instantly 
have had a fish on each of them. They were 
wild, jostling each other in their rush — wee 
things four or five to a pound. 


WHAT A SEA TROUT DID 163 


‘‘Don’t put them back,” said Jamie, as he 
dropped them into the boat. “The shepherd’s 
wife will salt them in for a winter’s relish — a 
pleasant change from braxie mutton and meal. 
They are snowed up sometimes for weeks 
together, and are glad to get them.” 

In less than an hour we must have taken 
fully a hundred of these troutlets. 

Meanwhile the clouds had been swallowed 
up in a thick haze. Then came a blinding flash 
of lightning, and instantly a roar of thunder 
that shook the ground. 

“Let us make haste out of this, Jamie,” I 
cried. 

We piled the fish into our landing-nets, drew 
up the boat, and hurried up the moor side to 
the shelter of the shepherd’s cottage, and glad 
were we to reach it, for there came a deluge of 
rain. 

The shepherd stood in the doorway and gave 
us a kindly greeting, for Jamie was an old 
friend. The good wife stood within, and bade 
me come and sit by the great fire. We got our 
lunch, enough for four, and shared it with 
them. The meal brought us into a pleasant 
family feeling, which on the men’s part was 
completed by a fill from my tobacco pouch as 
we sat by the fire. 

The shepherd himself was a grand specimen 


154 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


of a man, tall, broad-shouldered, with a cheery 
speech and kindly manner, his hand patting 
by turn the dogs that lay beside him. The 
good wife was a woman of some forty odd 
years, with a sunny face and the brightest of 
blue eyes, but slower of speech than her 
husband. 

“So ye come from London,” she ventured 
to say, timidly, as one imused to company. 
The nearest neighbors were a couple of miles 
away. 

It was with breaks and slowly that she went 
on. 

“A mighty place, I’ve heard, I was in 
Glascae once when I was a wee lassie, and I 
was almost frightened to death by all the 
crowds of people and the roar of the streets.” 

Then a pause. 

“Our boy is in London — our only bairn. He 
went up apprentice to his uncle, a carpenter. 
I was terrible sair to part with him. He is a 
good lad, is Donald. We get a letter from him 
every week.” Then she took from a nail a 
large silver watch. “That was his present to 
me last New Year.” 

A longer pause. 

“He tells me he’s going to be wed,” she 
sighed. “I’m most afeared for him with they 
grand London lassies. But she must be a 


WHAT A SEA TROUT DID 


155 


thrifty body — a bookkeeper, they call it, at 
his uncle’s place.” 

“Well,” I said, “you must give me his 
address, and I will get him to come to tea 
with me. I shall tell him what his mother 
thinks of him. And I think he will tell me 
what he thinks of his mother.” 

“I’m no af eared,” said she, with a pleasant 
laugh. 

The storm was done. So we shook hands 
with the kindly shepherd and his bonnie wife, 
and left the fish heaped up on a big dish. We 
had gone some distance towards the loch when 
she stood in the doorway and called after us, 
“Dinna forget the bairn.” 

“Indeed I will not,” said I, as I turned and 
waved my hand, little thinking that I should 
see her again, and in circumstances so sadly 
different. 

I had not been long at home when Donald 
came to tea with me — a youth of twenty-three 
or four, tall and broad-shouldered like his 
father, but with his mother’s sunny counte- 
nance and her bright, blue eyes. We had a 
happy talk of the day on the loch and the visit 
to the shepherd’s cottage. It was soon after 
that he wrote of his wedding, and asked me to 
tea with his wife and himself. 


156 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


I found them in a little flat in the People’s 
Buildings, a cozy kitchen where we sat at our 
meal, a scullery attached, and a couple of bed- 
rooms. Of the new wife I saw at a glance that 
I could make the mother’s heart glad with the 
assurance that her son had done well. Every- 
thing about the place told of her care, and for 
tea she prided herself that she had made some 
real Scotch scones. 

It was but a week later that Donald came in 
great trouble. He had got a letter from home 
with terrible tidings. His father had been 
killed by lightning. For three days the neigh- 
boring shepherds had gone from dawn to 
dusk searching for him over mountain and 
moor. Then on the evening of the third day 
there came a poor, wasted collie dog, scarcely 
able to stumble over the heather, and whining, 
eager to lead them to the spot where the 
shepherd lay. 

It was afterward, when Donald wrote to 
me, that I heard the more complete account 
of it all. He told me when his mother heard 
of it she fell down unconscious for an hour 
or more. Then slowly stirring as if out of a 
dream, she sat by the fire, dazed. She had not 
spoken a word nor shed a tear. The kindly 
body who had come to be with her could get 
no answer to any question, only a stare with- 


WHAT A SEA TROUT DID 157 


out thought or feeling, and a childish obedience 
when she brought some refreshment or led her 
to her bed. The coming of her son did not 
rouse her; she scarcely seemed to recognize 
him. It was as if the soul within her were 
numbed, paralyzed, dead. He wrote that she 
took no heed of the arrangements for going 
to London. He feared that her mind had be- 
come affected, and he was in the greatest 
distress. She seemed to have lost everything 
but an outwardly bodily life, and this dull 
submission to those about her. 

It was about a week after her coming to 
London that I called to see her. The son and 
his wife had their work to attend to, nor could 
they have done anything for her had one of 
them stayed at home. They set a glass of 
milk and some little refreshment by the side 
of the bed where she lay, but it was scarcely 
touched. 

I had knocked at the door, but there was 
no response, so I opened it quietly and went 
in. Donald and his wife had moved the bed 
into the kitchen — it was larger and more 
comfortable. Her eyes were closed, as if she 
had not heard my coming, and I sat down at 
her side. Then she turned and looked at me. 

I was horrified. Could this be the bonnie 
wife whom I had seen in Scotland? There 


158 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


rose before me again that sunny countenance 
and the bright eyes. Here was one pale, 
haggard, wasted. The eyes were glazed, as 
when a lake has been frozen whilst the snow 
has fallen, all cold and dulled. 

What could I say or do.^ I asked myself. A 
Bible lay on the shelf near by. I rose and took 
it to her side. 

“Shall I read you a chapter I said. 

But there was no reply. Alas, what use was 
there in reading to her when there was no 
heeding a word, much less any response? And 
prayer could be of no avail that met with 
nothing within her to which it appealed. 

“If only she could be roused!” I said to 
myself. “If some old memory of long ago 
would bring back consciousness; if only this 
numbness could be thawed!” Beaten and 
almost despairing, I took the cold, thin hand 
in mine, muttered a good-by, and went on 
my way. 

My thoughts were constantly of her. No 
longing ever filled my soul more fully than 
that I could in some way bring back the dead 
soul to life. The longing often became a 
prayer, for I felt that some higher and wiser 
help than mine could alone be of any avail. 

It was a fortnight later that I called again. 
And again I was met with that unmeaning 


WHAT A SEA TROUT DID 159 


stare, as if the eyes, and the eyes only, saw me. 
Again I took the Bible and sat beside her, 
and let it lie before me, for I almost shrank 
from using it. So passed some minutes in 
silence. Then I glanced at the page at which 
the book lay open, and read the words: “So, 
when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon 
Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” 

There came a flash of what — inspiration, 
revelation — what was it? 

I sprang up suddenly, and hurried away, 
relieved to feel that here at last was something 
that I could do. I thought how the blessed 
Lord had not come to Peter to talk to him 
when he was numbed with the cold, and dulled 
with hunger, but he lit the fire for his warmth, 
and got the dinner for his hunger, and when 
they had dined he said, “Lovest thou me?” 
And it was a joy to me to think I was follow- 
ing in his steps. 

In the flat beneath lived an old Scotch 
friend of mine. I ran down the steps and 
opened the door. 

“How long do you boil a sea trout, Mrs. 
Maclachan, about a pound and a half?” 

“Twenty minutes,” said she, wondering at 
my haste; “mind ye put a handful o’ salt 
in the water.” 

It was not far to the nearest fishmonger. 


160 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


and soon I was back again with my sea trout. 
I set it on a dish and brought it to her. 

“There!” I said, “look what I have got 
for you!” 

She opened those unseeing eyes and looked 
at me for a moment. Then she caught sight 
of the fish that I had set down before her. 

“Here!” I said. “Let me lift you up that 
you may see it.” And I set the pillows for 
her as she raised herself. 

A look of astonishment fiashed across her 
face. Oh, what a joy it was to me to see it! 

“Why,” she whispered, “it’s a bonnie sea 
trout!” The astonishment still filled her face. 
“And did ye catch it yoursel’.^” 

“I got it on purpose for you,” I said. 

Then there came a far-away look into her eyes. 

“Eh, I mind — I mind.” 

Her soul was surely struggling to life again. 

I listened eagerly, thinking that some memory 
had come that might thaw the frozen soul. 
The words came slowly with long pauses, her 
eyes fixed as if she were looking at something 
of long ago. 

“Eh — I mind — it was afore the bairn came — 
I cared neither for bite nor sup. Eh, I mind it 
well. My gude man he went and caught me a 
bonnie sea trout and cooked it hissel. Eh, my 
braw mon!” 


WHAT A SEA TROUT DID 161 


There were tears in her eyes now. Oh, if 
this cloud would but pass away in a shower. 

“My braw mon!” she said again, but the 
tears were stayed. 

I set myseK to do everything I could think 
of to rouse her further. I took off my coat 
and bustled about the place with all ado, as 
her eyes followed me. I kept speaking aloud 
as I flew about the place. 

“Now the saucepan, and some water. 
Twenty minutes, and a handful of salt in 
it. Is that right And I came back to 
her. 

Oh, how my heart leaped as I saw a faint 
smile on those lips. And surely those eyes 
were growing brighter. The smile grew fuller 
as she said in a whisper: 

“Ye a meenister, and ye ken that!” 

I could have shouted a hymn of praise, but 
feared to stay a moment in my rush. I curled 
the fish up in the little saucepan so that it 
would come out on the right side — and set it 
on the fire — and looking at my watch — 

“Twenty minutes,” I said. “But there, I 
have forgotten the handful of salt!” 

And I peeped over my shoulder to see those 
eyes following me with a look of amusement, 
and the smile spreading its sunshine over the 
face. 


162 


THE ORTHODOX DEVH. 


‘‘And now a dish, and a couple of plates in 
the oven.” 

“Oh,” it was a laugh — a tiny little laugh, 
but real and unmistakable. 

“And ye a meenister,” she said. This time 
it was more than a whisper. 

I set the tablecloth, and put out the knives 
and forks. What a clatter I made of it all! 
And then got the teapot. 

“Three spoonfuls,” I said. “And mind the 
water is boiling.” 

“Oh,” another laugh — a fuller, louder laugh 
this time. 

Now all was ready — a cup of tea poured out, 
and a dainty slice of the fish on her plate, and 
the bread and butter beside it. 

“We will say grace,” I said, and stood up 
at the little table. I remembered that in 
Scotland it was a matter much more devout 
than our hurried utterance. I waited with 
closed eyes and clasped hands, waited as if 
for words to be given me — and I think they 
were: “Blessed Master, thou hast said. Be- 
hold, I stand at the door and knock. If any 
man hear my voice and open the door I will come 
in and sup with him. We hear thy voice, and 
ask thy gracious presence with us here. Amen.” 

How fervent was the response — that twice 
repeated Amen! 


WHAT A SEA TROUT DID 163 


So the happy feast went on, except that 
every now and then the knife and fork rested 
on the plate and those blue eyes were set on 
me, and there came again the little laugh — 
‘‘An’ ye a meenister!” 

I had put the things away, leaving a good 
supply for the son and his wife, and sat down 
at her side again. Those eyes were shining 
now with heaven’s own blue in them, and 
heaven’s sunshine filled her face. She put out 
her hand and let it rest on mine. 

“What made ye think of it all?” she asked. 
“I will tell you.” And I read the words 
again: “ ‘And when they had dined.’ Peter 
was numb with the cold and wet and hungry. 
The Lord would not talk to him then, but 
warmed him, and gave him a good dinner. 
Then he said, ‘Lovest thou me, Simon?’ And 
Simon Peter said, ^Thou Jcnowest all things, 
thou hnowest that I love thee^ ” 

I could afford to be silent for a while, and 
let her be filled with the thoughts, the con- 
sciousness, the life that had come back to her. 
Later I repeated the lines that are almost as 
Scripture to the Scotch soul: 

“The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want; 

He makes me down to lie 
In pastures green: He leadeth me 
The quiet waters by.” 


164 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


“You know,” I said, “how your braw man, 
the shepherd, has sometimes found a sheep 
away in the snow more dead than alive — too 
weak to stand and scarcely able to bleat. And 
he brought it home on his shoulders, and set 
it down before the fire, and tended it and 
cared for it, and brought it back to life again.” 

Her hands were clasped, and the gladness 
within her shone forth from the blue eyes and 
sunny face. 

“The Good Shepherd has brought me back 
to life and love,” she said. 

I heard the son and his wife at the door. 
“I must go now.” 

“Eh,” said she, with that bright smile of 
hers, “I’m thinking that the fish the Master 
gave Peter must have been a bonnie sea trout.” 


XVII 


THE SONG OF THE OYSTER SHELL 

A SONG it was that came to me; though 
lacking rime and rhythm, yet no less 
a song. 

I had gone for a holiday to the Channel 
Islands, and joined the fishermen for a day 
at sea. We were becalmed at noon, so the 
crew lay down to doze or smoke their pipes. 
I was reading Geikie on Geology when I came 
across this statement: — 

It has been estimated that the River Rhine 
brings down annually lime enough to supply 
three hundred and thirty-three million oysters 
with shells, 

A lowly origin for my song, but like the lark 
that rises from its grassy nest, it went soaring 
up to heaven. 

I saw the Alps rise stately and sublime. 
“O mighty Alps,” said I, “what to you in 
your majesty are paltry things in the far-off 
sea!” And the great Alps said, “Did you 
not know — there are three hundred and thirty- 
165 


166 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


three million oyster spats waiting for their 
shells, and we have got to send them.” 

Ah me, I thought, what a thing it is to be 
an oyster. 

And I saw the great sun in the heavens. 

“O great sun,” said I, “flinging exhaustless 
energies of light and heat, dazzling in your 
splendor, what to you are paltry things in the 
far-off sea.^” 

And the great sun said, “There are millions 
of oyster spats out there wanting shells, and I 
have got to send them.” 

And the sun fetched up the vapor; and the 
vapor became the snow; and the snow be- 
came the glacier; and the glacier rent and 
tare the mountain-side. 

Ah me, thought I, what a thing it is to be 
an oyster. 

And I saw a score of leaping, laughing 
waterfalls, sweeping from the mountain heights, 
breaking into thunder, rainbow-hued as the 
spray rose about them — on they rushed swiftly 
to the valleys below. 

“Whither away in such a hurry?” said I. 

“We are in a hurry,” said they. 

“But why?” 

“There are millions of oysters in the far-off 
sea wanting shells, and we have to send the 
lime to make them.” 


SONG OF THE OYSTER SHELL 167 


Ah me, I thought, what a hurry for an 
oyster! 

And I saw the River Rhine. “Proud river,” 
I said, “arbiter of nations, flowing past castles 
that you make strong, flowing past cities that 
you make great, what to you are paltry things 
in the far-off sea.^” 

And the great river said, “Why, there are 
milhons of oysters out there wanting shells, 
and I have to carry the lime to make them.” 


We are more than oysters — let us have that 
conceit. And what else can be true but that 
all the machinery of the universe is ours to 
wait upon us, and minister to the least and 
lowest of our needs? 


XVIII 


THE PASSING OF PETER TREGWIN 

D ick CARVOSSO had been pretty well 
all over the world — that is, the world 
of miners — from Australia to South 
Africa, and afar off to California and Klondyke. 
Not from any grim necessity of failure, but 
because he was of a roving disposition and 
wanted to see things elsewhere. He had done 
fairly well, and had enough for his simple 
wants. He had been a bachelor all his days, 
and did all the housework of his little cottage 
— and did it well. He could cook anything, 
for in his wanderings he had learned to prepare 
all manner of food from the stew of kangaroo 
tail to the steaks of a bear. 

To me it was a pleasant thing to walk over 
the stretch of moor with its furze, the gold 
and frankincense in one, to climb the little 
rugged path where granite rocks thrust them- 
selves, and to sit with him in his garden, for he 
really was great at gardening. And there on 
a bench by the cottage door you looked down 
over that stretch of sea from the Longships 
168 


PASSING OF PETER TREGWIN 169 


to the Lizard, and far off on the horizon was 
a dim haze of islands where was Scilly. 

Many adventures had Dick Carvosso to tell, 
wild and stirring, a stock of stories to fill a 
volume. He had come from my native town, 
and though I had never known him there, 
there were many old folk familiar to us both 
of whom it was (good to talk. 

“Did you ever come across Peter Tregwin?” 
I said one day as we sat together. “His old 
father I remember well — a saint, something of 
whose prayers I can still recall. I know he 
made me think as a little lad that it was a 
mistake to make the angels like ladies with 
white nightdresses, and their hair hanging 
down their backs. To me old Malachi Tregwin 
was an angel in trousers — those blue eyes of 
his carried heaven’s sunshine in them, and that 
voice of his when he spoke in the love feast 
and prayed in the prayer meeting was like 
heaven’s music. He was all so different from 
many, perhaps from most of those who began 
by thanking God that he had not ^swept them 
away with the besom of destruction* How that 
phrase haunted me! Malachi always called 
God Father, and talked as if God was to him 
all that my own dear father was to me. And 
his wife, dear blessed Mary Ann, made with 
him a beautiful pair of saints who walked those 


170 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


Cornish lanes as if they were the golden streets 
of the Celestial City. Did you ever come 
across Peter?” 

Dick Carvosso lifted his hand and stroked 
the “goatee” — the tuft that he wore on his 
chin — the sign commonly of the emigrant, the 
rest of the face clean-shaven or close-cropped. 

“Dear, dear, Petter Tregwin,” Dick sighed. 
“Why, he and me was boys together, and 
comrades so long as he lived. Where Petter 
went I went too — ’twas share and share alike 
with Petter and me. ’Tisn’t often brothers is 
so much to each other as we was. Ah, Petter, 
Petter! I was never much of a man to make 
friends, but he was more than any friend — a 
sort of Jonathan and David ’twas with he and 
me.” 

Again Dick Carvosso sighed heavily as he 
looked out over the sea. 

“Then he is dead?” I said. 

“Yes, yes, he’s dead, poor, dear Petter.” 

We sat in silence for a few minutes. Then 
Dick Carvosso rose and went into his cottage. 
He came back with a Bible and a photo- 
graph. 

“I do count they amongst my treasures,” 
said Dick; “and more than any of the rest. 
That’s Petter’s Bible that his mother gived 
him. Take care, ’tis a bit worn, and if I lost 


PASSING OF PETER TREGWIN 171 


so much as a leaf of it I should never forgive 
myself.” 

I opened it and read the inscription in his 
mother’s hand- writing, “God hless you, my dear’" 
Then Dick handed me the photograph which 
had been carefully wrapped up in a silk hand- 
kerchief. 

“That’s his mother,” said Dick. 

Stiff and constrained, as all old photographs 
seem to be, as to the hands and figure, yet the 
face, that sweet, sweet face, was there all 
unfaded and beautiful. Again there came a 
silence. Dick’s sad eyes still lingered over the 
sea, but plainly enough there were other 
pictures filling his thoughts. Then as he took 
the book and the photograpi| from me he said: 
“They are sacred, they are. They was more 
to Fetter than all the gold we ever got or ever 
lost, and now they are more to me.” 

“Poor Peter!” I said, after a long silence. 
“I remember him well — a sharp, clever boy, 
but always up to some boyish mischief and 
sometimes in trouble. But there was always 
one appeal that went far to check any punish- 
ment, ‘Please don’t ’ee go for to tell mother.’ ” 

“Yes,” said Dick, “it was always mother 
’long with Petter. No matter where we was 
to, a hundred miles sometimes from any post 
office, there was never a chance of sending a 


172 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


letter but one was waiting for mother. And 
when good luck come, it was always to mother 
that the first saving went. ‘ ’Twill make her 
dear heart sing,’ Petter would say to me, ‘and 
that’s the sweetest music I want to hear in 
this world or any other.’ 

“That photograph has a story,” continued 
Dick, “and so fine a story as any photograph 
ever had. We was away on the Plains in 
California, fifty miles from the store, a place 
where you could get anything for miners or 
cowboys, and some things it would be better 
to do without. The post office was there, and 
Petter and me had ridden in for our supplies, 
and to see if there was any letters. There was 
always a rough crowd of fellows about the 
place ready to drink with any newcomer, and 
with a pistol stuck in the belt that they was 
quick enough to use, and nobody to interfere 
with them, neither. 

“Well, that day there was a letter from 
home for Petter, and in it was that photograph. 
Petter was excited enough about it, I can tell 
’ee, and he and me stood outside the place, he 
reading the letter and me looking at the face 
and thinking how sweet it was. Well, Petter 
had finished the letter and then he kissed the 
photograph and put it in his pocket, his eyes 
shining and his face all over smiles. 


PASSING OF PETER TREGWIN 173 


“There was a big bully of a fellow sitting 
on a barrel of whisky, half drunk he was, and 
he sat watching us with a grin on his face 
and his hands playing with his revolver. 

“ ‘Say, pard, come and drink to her health,’ 
cried the fellow. 

“Petter said nothing, but there came an 
angry frown on his face as he turned away. 

“The fellow began a string of oaths and 
holloed, ‘When I ask a chap civil to drink 
’long with me I expect a civil answer. Hang 
me if I’m going to take a thing like that from 
anybody. No, sir,’ and he got off the barrel 
and came near us. 

“Petter was a little chap, and always looked 
years younger than he was, so the bully 
thought he would make short work of it. 

“ ‘I don’t drink,’ said Petter, quietly. 

“ ‘What, can’t you speak out.^’ roared the 
fellow. 

“ T told you I don’t drink.’ 

“ ‘Well, I never! A boy that don’t drink!’ 
Then he called the crowd. ‘Here, boys, this 
fellow don’t drink — guess we’ll have to larn 
him how — ’tis time he began.’ 

“The others, always ready for any excite- 
ment, gathered round us. 

“ ‘No,’ said Petter, ‘I don’t drink, and I 
shan’t, either.’ 


174 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


“ ‘We’ll see about that/ laughed the bully, 
laying a hand on his coat-collar to drag him 
into the store. 

‘Tetter kept as cool as cool could be. ‘If 
you lads wait a minute I’ll tell you why I 
don’t drink and never did.’ The hand loosened 
his collar, and curiosity quieted the crowd. 
Fetter put his hand into his pocket and took 
out the photograph. 

“ ‘Look at that, lads,’ said Fetter, proudly, 
and it was handed from one to another. ‘That’s 
my mother,’ said Fetter, ‘the dearest woman 
God ever made.’ 

“A great silence fell on them all. 

“ ‘Wliat do ’ee think of it, lads?’ said Fetter 
as he took the photograph into his hand. 
‘When a man has got a mother like that he 
can die if he must, and he’ll do it before he 
would hurt her dear heart.’ 

“Bless ’ee, they might have been in church 
listening to a sermon, they was all that solemn. 
And Feter standing among them so simple as 
a child, looking at the photograph. 

“ ‘Lads,’ he said, ‘I promised her I would 
never drink, and I never have — and I’m sure 
there isn’t one of you chaps that would like 
me to.’ 

“ ‘Shake hands, pard,’ said the bully with 
a bit of a choke in his voice. 


PASSING OF PETER TREGWIN 175 


“It was shake hands all round. ‘You’re a 
man, you are, that any mother might be proud 
of,’ said an old grizzly miner. And Peter was 
a sort of a conquering hero. 

“We was mounting our horses to ride back 
when the bully came round to Fetter. ‘Pard,’ 
said he, ‘show us that photograph again, will 
you.?’ 

“He took it and looked at it for some mo- 
ments, and when he gave it back there were 
tears in his eyes, and his hand trembled. 
broke my mother's hearty said he.” 

“Ah, Peter, Peter!” I said, breaking the 
silence which followed Dick’s story. “You 
were with him when he died.?” I asked. 

“I was,” said Dick, “and I never had the 
heart to go anywhere afterward. I come 
right home and settled. His old mother and 
father was dead, and half the joy of life seemed 
to die out of Fetter’s heart when they were 
gone. He couldn’t never settle down after 
that, and never talked of going home. ‘No, 
Dick,’ he said, when I talked of it, ‘No, they’re 
gone, and there’s nothing left to go home for 
now.’ ” 

Again Dick sat in silence for some moments, 
his eyes fixed as if his thoughts were looking 
back over the years. 

“There’s days in a man’s life,” he began. 


176 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


“when time do stand still, like the sun did in 
that there story in the Bible. There you are, 
and there you stay, never able to get away 
from it — never like a thing past and gone. IVe 
said it myself sometimes; the same, yesterday, 
to-day and for ever. And that’s what Fetter’s 
going is to this very hour. A sort o’ thing I 
never cared to talk about, like as if ’twas 
sacred — iss, too sacred for words.” 

“Give me the Bible again,” I said, hoping 
that somehow I might get the story from him 
as I opened the pages. It was the hundred and 
third psalm that my eyes fell upon, and I 
noticed heavy pencil marks by many of the 
verses. 

“Was this his favorite chapter.?” I asked. 

“Well — you shall hear it,” said Dick, “for 
with the Bible open there I feel I could tell it 
all. That was his mother’s favorite chapter, 
and his father’s too. And many a time Fetter 
would say to me on a Sunday when we was 
far from any church or chapel and sat in our 
camp together, ‘Dick, lev us gone to talk of 
they home there. ’Twill do us good, so much 
good as a sermon,’ and he would bring out the 
Bible and read that psalm. 

“It was up in the Rockies that we had gone 
prospecting, Fetter and me, when it come on 
to a terrible blizzard. We had pitched our 


PASSING OF PETER TREGWIN 177 


camp under a big rock in a bit of a cave 
sheltered under the great pine trees. It came 
all of a sudden, a storm that tore through the 
forest like thunder, and now and then came 
the snap of a branch or the crash of a tree. We 
weren’t very far from the camp, and in the 
darkness and blinding snow we made for it as 
fast as we could. I was a bit in front, and when 
I got to the camp I looked round expecting 
to see Petter close by me, and he wasn’t there. 
I went back for a few yards and there was 
Petter. He had stumbled over the roots of a 
tree and fallen heavily against the trunk. I 
picked him up in my arms and carried him 
back to the camp so well as I could, and then 
by the light of the fire I saw he had a terrible 
gash in his forehead. The snow had stopped 
the bleeding, and I could just feel the flutter 
of life in his heart as I laid him down before 
the fire and tried to rub some warmth into 
him, for he seemed all frozen together. At last 
he opened his eyes — and looked up. 

‘Comrade,’ says he, ‘where am I?’ and he 
looked about the place dazed like. ‘Where’s 
mother to, then?’ says he. Then he fell back 
and sank asleep. But it wasn’t for long. ‘Com- 
rade,’ says he, ‘where’s mother?’ says he again. 

“I got the photograph and held it for him 
to look at, but he said — 


178 


THE ORTHODOX DEVIL 


“ ‘ ’Twasn’t no photograph, Dick; ’twas 
mother herself/ 

“ ‘You’ve been dreaming, Fetter,’ I said. 

“But Fetter shook his head. ‘ ’Twas more 
than a dream, Dick, and better too. I was a 
little child again, back there just like it used 
to be. The dear of her, I could feel her hands 
undressing of me for the night, and I kneeled 
down and said the prayers she had taught me, 
her hand on my head just as it used to be 
then. And then I laid down in my bed, my 
hand in hers, and she a-singing me to sleep, 
singing about the angels.’ 

“Again Fetter sank back, and in the dance 
of the firelight I could see a smile on his white 
face, his lips moving as if he were speaking to 
somebody. 

“I saw that he was sinking, so I got out 
the Bible and opened it there, and read it 
very slowly. 

“ ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is 
within me bless his holy name. Who forgiveth 
all thine iniquities,'' 

“ ‘Say it again, Dick,’ and his lips repeated 
it after me. ‘Who forgiveth alV — he paused on 
that word, and said it again, and yet again — 
*all thine iniquities.’ Then he lay back and 
his mind wandered. It was plain that he was 
away in the years of long ago. He put out 


PASSING OF PETER TREGWIN 179 


his hand feeling for one at his side. I read on, 
^Who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and 
tender mercies,^ Then he sprang up from the 
buffalo robe on which he lay, and stretched 
out his hand, and thrust out his arms, ‘Mother, 
iss, I’m cornin’, bless ’ee, I’m cornin’,’ And 
Fetter was dead.” 

We sat for some time in silence, a sacred 
hush, as the sun went down behind the 
Western sea, the heavens ablaze with gold 
and purple glory, like lords about their dying 
king. 

It was Dick who broke the silence. 

“You know I’m fond o’ reading.” 

“I know you are,” I said; “and I have 
often been delighted at your choice of 
books.” 

Then Dick went into the cottage and brought 
out a copy of Milton’s poems. 

“There’s poetry,” said he, “some of it like 
a harp, and some of it like the roll of a drum. 
But Milton is the organ, great and grand and 
solemn.” 

“You put it well,” I said, “that’s Milton, 
certainly.” 

“But he made a mistake once, to my think- 
ing, Milton did. Look here.” And Dick opened 
at the Comus and read the lines — 


180 


THE ORTHODOX DEVH. 


“ *So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity. 

That when a soul is found sincerely so, 

A thousand liveried angels lacquey her. 

Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt/ 

‘‘Now, seemin’ to me that they kind don’t 
need the angels to look after them. They can 
take care of their own selves, they can. I like 
to think of an angel that could live ’long with 
a couple of miners all over the world, and in 
all kinds of company, and in all kinds of places, 
and keep them right and good through it all. 
And that’s what Fetter’s mother did for Fetter 
and me. That’s the angel I do like to think 
about. Iss, that’s what she was. Fetter’s 
mother.” 

The Fower that made a mother is the Fower 
we can trust for ever. 

A mother is Heaven’s “Fear not” to Earth. 

And Heaven touches Earth at both ends — 
the first and the last. She who is the sacred 
memory of what was is the prophet of what 
shall be. Not forlorn, not estranged, not 
lonely shall we go forth into that other world. 

‘The love that greeted thy coming then. 

Is the love that waits to greet thee again.*’ 


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